I would like to share with Forum members and guests the expert grammar opinions I have obtained on the usage of the adjective “contiguous,” which, it will be recalled, I used twice last May 10 in the course of a discussion in the Forum on subject-verb agreement. My use of “contiguous” was disputed by Forum member maxsims, who insisted that I should have used the word “continuous” instead.
The protracted discussions in the Forum over the usage remained unresolved. Then, last May 27, I was reminded by Forum member vans26 of my earlier assurance to maxsims that I’d get expert grammar opinion to resolve the matter once and for all. I therefore made consultations right away with several noted English-usage columnists and professors as well as with a leading dictionary company, all based in the United States.
Those who graciously responded to my request for their grammar opinion are as follows:
•
Prof. Richard Lederer, “Looking at Language” syndicated newspaper columnist in the United States and author of
Miracle of Language•
Prof. Paul Brians, emeritus professor of English at Washington State University-Pullman and author of the book
Common Errors in English Usage and of the website that carries the same name
•
Jan Freeman, “The Word” language columnist of the
Boston Sunday Globe•
Prof. Ben Yagoda, journalism professor at the University of Delaware, freelance journalist for
The New York Times and
Newsweek, and author of
When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It•
Merriam-Webster Inc., publisher of the
Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged and the
Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate DictionaryHERE’S THE LETTER THAT I E-MAILED TO EACH OF THEM:I would like to I ask for your opinion on the usage of the adjective “contiguous” in the following passage that I posted recently in Jose Carillo’s English Forum (boldfacing supplied here for emphasis):
Take the case of [The Manila Times editor in chief] Rene Bas’s first example, “Five meters of rope was needed.” There’s no arguing that the singular verb-form “was” is grammatically and notionally correct if the speaker is thinking of a contiguous piece of rope that’s five meters long. But if what the speaker (perhaps a magician) has in mind are five separate lengths of rope, each 1 meter long? Then I don’t think we can question that speaker’s use of the plural-form “were” when he makes a declaration like this: “For my magic act, five meters of rope were needed.” (If you are a newly hired assistant of this magician, of course, you probably would ask him to be more specific by asking, “You mean one contiguous piece of rope 5 meters long, or did you mean five lengths of rope that were 1-meter-long apiece?”) In any case, what we have here is a grammar situation similar to that of your “petrol” conundrum; you’ll use either the singular or plural form of the verb depending on what’s precisely on your mind. In other words, it’s your point of view that dictates whether you’ll use a singular or plural form of the verb.
A Forum member [maxsims] insisted that I should have used the word “continuous” instead of “contiguous” in that passage.
I justified my usage of “contiguous” by citing the following definitions of the word by
Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary:
contiguous
1 : being in actual contact : touching along a boundary or at a point
2 of angles : ADJACENT 2
3 : next or near in time or sequence
4 : touching or connected throughout in an unbroken sequence <contiguous row houses>
In contrast, I argued, “continuous” in the context of this discussion clearly means “marked by uninterrupted extension in space, time, or sequence.” The operative definition in this definition is “extension,” whose verb form, “extend,” means “to spread or stretch forth,” which is not the idea for my usage of the word “contiguous,” which I used to mean “connected throughout in an unbroken sequence.”
The Forum member rebutted this justification with the following comment:
Yeah, right...!
Exactly what is touching or connected in your five metre length of rope?
Describe the sequence.
Is your good wife’s tape measure a contiguous length of tape, or a continuous one?
To these remarks by the Forum member, I made the following rejoinder:
I…maintain that “contiguous” is absolutely the correct word for the two instances of my usage of it above, in the precise sense of Def. 4, “touching or connected throughout in an unbroken sequence.” The wholeness of the piece of rope was the operative idea all throughout my discussion of it*, and at no time was the idea of “spreading” or “extending” that length of rope ever suggested in the discussion.”
My question is: Is my use of the word “contiguous” in the original passage correct, or should the correct word in that context be “continuous” instead?Some of my Forum members have expressed a strong desire to know the opinion of other English grammar experts on this word choice issue, so I would greatly appreciate it if you could find time to comment on the issue.
THEIR EXPERT OPINIONS:Here are their respective replies to my letter:
Prof. Richard Lederer: I agree with your friend that “contiguous” is the incorrect word in this context. “Contiguous” describes separate entities that are touching, such as rows of houses. A rope is a single entity.
Prof. Paul Brians:I think “contiguous” requires the length to be made up of actual physical units touching, not notional units like “feet.” I agree with those who say “continuous” would be better.
Jan Freeman, language columnist:It would always be “continuous,” not “contiguous,” for me. (And a Google search shows way more “continuous” lengths than “contiguous.”) Etymology is not destiny, it’s true, but I believe the root of
contiguous (don’t have time to look it up) is Latin for “touch” (
tangere).
And the OED definition (below) makes clear that what it means is separate things making contact, not one (continuous) thing. (Note “common boundary, bordering”). I would say you need two or more items before you can have contiguity.
CONTIGUOUS
1. Touching, in actual contact, next in space; meeting at a common boundary, bordering, adjoining. Const to, formerly also with.
1611 CORYAT Crudities 81 Two seuerall Castles built on a rocke which are so neare together that they are euen contiguous. 1626 BACONSylva §865 Water, being contiguous with aire, cooleth it, but moisteneth it not. 1644 EVELYN Diary 21 Apr., This [island] is contiguous to ye towne by a stately stone bridge. 1722 J. MACKY Journ. thro' Eng. I. 177 London and Westminster..are now by their Buildings become contiguous, and in a manner united. 1750 JOHNSON Rambler No. 34 3 An heiress whose land lies contiguous to mine. 1842 W. GROVECorr. Phys. Forces 49 The hydrogen..unites with the oxygen of the contiguous molecule of water. 1874 S. COX Pilgr. Ps. iii. 51 Long rows of contiguous houses.
The OED does have two 18th-century citations of the word used to mean “continuous,” but these are labeled Obsolete:
4. Continuous, with its parts in uninterrupted contact. Obs.
1715 LEONI tr. Palladio's Archit. (1742) I. 51 Instead of Pilasters, there is a contiguous Wall. 1725 DE FOE Voy. round World II. 47 The notion of the Hills being contiguous, like a wall that had no gates.
I hope this is helpful.
Prof. Ben Yagoda: Hello, Joe. My gut feeling would be not to use “contiguous.” I think of “contiguous” as referring to two or more areas that touch each other—most commonly, the 48
contiguous states of the United States—rather than to a property of a single thing or object. Even your definition 4, below, refers to
contiguous row HOUSES, plural. I’m not wild about “continuous” in the context of the rope, either. I feel there is a better adjective, but I’m not sure what it is.
Merriam-Webster Editorial Department:Before we get into the specifics of usage, here are the definitions for “continuous” and “contiguous” in the
Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged:
Main Entry:con•tig•u•ous
Function:adjective
Etymology:Latin contiguus, from contingere to touch on all sides -- more at CONTINGENT
1 a (1) : touching along boundaries often for considerable distances <Kentucky and Tennessee are contiguous> <a lot contiguous to a road> (2) of angles : ADJACENT 2 b : next or adjoining with nothing similar intervening <the contiguous bedroom -- W.M.Thackeray> <two contiguous benches -- Jane Austen> c : NEARBY, CLOSE : not distant <while the dwelling vibrates to the din of the contiguous torrent -- William Wordsworth> d : CONTINUOUS, UNBROKEN, UNINTERRUPTED : touching or connected throughout <the houses ... contiguous all along from end to end of the town -- Nathaniel Hawthorne>
2 a : immediately preceding or following in time or sequence : without intervening interval or item; also : involving items so occurring or arranged b : near in time or sequence
synonym see ADJACENT
Main Entry:con•tin•u•ous
Function:adjective
Etymology:Latin continuus, from contin re to hold together -- more at CONTINENT
1 a : characterized by uninterrupted extension in space : stretching on without break or interruption <a continuous and rather spacious channel -- C.H.Grandgent> b : characterized by uninterrupted extension in time or sequence : continuing without intermission or recurring regularly after minute interruptions <humanism has been sporadic, but Christianity continuous -- T.S.Eliot> <a continuous rearrangement of electrons in the solar atoms results in the emission of light -- James Jeans>
2 : operated without interruption <a continuous furnace> <a continuous retort>
3 of sculpture : having one depicted scene following another without an obvious break
4 of a beam, span, truss : having three or more supports or extending over two or more panels -- see BRIDGE illustration
5 of plant spores a : lacking septa b : merging or in protoplasmic continuity with the tissue of the cap or peridium (as in certain fungi)
6 : PROGRESSIVE 7
7 : of the nature of a continuum
8 of a function : having an arbitrarily small numerical difference between the value at a point and the value at any point in a sufficiently small neighborhood of the point
synonym see CONTINUAL
The primary connotational difference between “continuous” and “contiguous” is that “contiguous” is often used to refer to separate units that are touching, yet still identifiably separate, whereas “continuous” is more often used to refer to a whole that could be broken into separate units, but in this particular case is not. That said, you will see that in at least one sense, they are synonymous, and in fact there is very little “real-life” usage difference between “continuous” and “contiguous” in these synonymous senses. The only difference between the two is that “continuous” is more common.
We took an informal office poll, and when asked to choose between “continuous” and “contiguous,” all the editors we polled preferred “continuous.” However, they all noted that the construction sounded very awkward regardless of whether “contiguous” or “continuous” was used, and would tend toward simpler language, like “a single piece of rope that is five meters long,” for clarity’s sake.
MY POSTSCRIPT:I would like to publicly express my thanks and appreciation to all those who took the trouble to comment on the disputed usage of “contiguous” and “continuous.”
I still believe that “contiguous” was appropriate in the context of my usage of it, which on hindsight verged towards technical language, but the preponderance of expert opinion against the use of this adjective has convinced me that it should be avoided for general readers. As to “continuous,” I don’t find it acceptable as a substitute for “contiguous” and I agree with the editors polled by Merriam-Webster Inc. that using “continuous” would result in a very awkward-sounding construction; I disagree with them, though, that using “contiguous” would have the same result.
In closing, I would like to share with Forum members my rejoinder to Prof. Ben Yagoda. The thoughts that I have shared with him captures my own thinking now after receiving the various opinions about the disputed usage of “contiguous”:
June 1, 2010
Dear Ben,
Thank you so much for your opinion on the usage of “contiguous” and “continuous.” I think your gut feeling is correct that either of them isn’t very suitable for describing a rope and that there’s probably a more suitable adjective. Indeed, I posed the same question to the editorial department of Merriam-Webster, Inc. in Springfield MA and their thinking was along the same lines:
The primary connotational difference between “continuous” and “contiguous” is that “contiguous” is often used to refer to separate units that are touching, yet still identifiably separate, whereas “continuous” is more often used to refer to a whole that could be broken into separate units, but in this particular case is not. That said, you will see that in at least one sense, they are synonymous, and in fact there is very little “real-life” usage difference between “continuous” and “contiguous” in these synonymous senses. The only difference between the two is that “continuous” is more common.
We took an informal office poll, and when asked to choose between “continuous” and “contiguous,” all the editors we polled preferred “continuous.” However, they all noted that the construction sounded very awkward regardless of whether “contiguous” or “continuous” was used, and would tend toward simpler language, like “a single piece of rope that is five meters long,” for clarity’s sake.
So there you are, Ben: I think Merriam-Webster Inc.’s “a single piece of rope” comes closest to the sense of the better adjective that you hadn’t been able to immediately pin down. “A single piece of rope”! I certainly would have phrased myself that way had I known better!
With my best wishes,
Joe Carillo
---------
*ENDNOTE: My usage of “contiguous” in the passage in question is in the same context as the usage of that adjective in the following statements, admittedly largely of technical nature, that I gathered from the web (all italicizations for emphasis mine):
(1)
“Wherever mention is made on these pages of libraries or museums, van Krijdt has pinned the rasp of
a long contiguous piece of string. From the linear “notation” of the strings’ progress, he and his studio assistant Joseph Ramey have composed music.”—
“Heavy Metal: Nicolas van Krijdt's ‘Inland Ocean’ not for those afraid of the water” (2)
“Cut the metal stair edge trim to length with a coping saw, so that each stair edge will be fully covered from side to side with
one contiguous piece of trim. Lightly hammer the trim nails in place (nails are included with the trim). If possible, allow the adhesive to dry overnight before using the steps.”—
“How to Install Linoleum on Stairs”(3)
“Then use that monkeyfist as a core for a 4 bight monkeyfist. Now you have a monkeyfist that is almost 100% absorbent material, and made from
a single contiguous piece of rope. The only part of the wick that isn’t absorbent is the short length of cable and two swages. Pretty damn efficient!”—
Home of Poi: “Technical Discussion: Idea for monkeyfist wicks” (4)
“What I want to do is model a wire rope going through its reeving in a hoist. I have to do this with derived parts currently and reference planes within the assembly. There has to be a better way - so I stumbled upon the belt/chain button. But, this only works with coplanar pulleys (i.e. it only understands one plane per belt). In a hoist,
one contiguous piece of rope will go through multiple sheaves (pulleys) in different planes.”—
Solid Works: “Belt/chain help” (5)
“On a recent visit to that site I witnessed the accounts payable people actually using the special three ply dot matrix paper with the laser printer. Once again, for those who have never used one, let me explain why this is a problem. Each box of paper is actually
one long contiguous piece of paper with perforations between the individual sheets. So, each piece is torn from that long strip.”—
Made2Mentor: “Red and Black Antennas Waving…” 
