TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Ask the Editor, I’m Peter Sokolowski, Editor-in-Chief at Merriam-Webster. Everyone has a pet peeve on English. One thing we sometimes hear about is the use of the word hope to mean, I hope, as in “Hopefully it won’t rain tomorrow.” The use of the word hope seems to have started in the US rather than the UK, and exploded in popularity around 1960. The increased popularity brought a wave of criticism. This usage is really annoying for some people. The fierce debate often goes like this: Since the word hope originally meant hope, it cannot mean, I hope. People with this particular taste believe that using words in this way is completely illogical or meaningless. Some commentators have even warned that the original meaning of the word will, hopefully, somehow be lost as the newer meanings spread. But that makes no sense. A lot of words have many meanings and we all use them without difficulty. No one ever forgets what cookie or mouse is just because nowadays we also use those words with new meanings. The fact is, some adverbs can be used in two different ways. In, “You can talk frankly with us,” frank modified a single word. Here it will be called an adverb of manner. But in the sentence “Honestly, I think your essay needs more work,” it modifies an entire sentence and will be called a sentence adverb or a detached adverb. Disjuncts are an effective way to comment directly on the content of a sentence. A few other adverbs in sentences that work in a similar way are “interestingly”, “plain”, “lucky” and “unfortunate”. The fact is, language changes fast enough for us to notice, and when people notice changes, there is often a backlash. The main complaint about the sentence adverb hope is that it’s new, but it’s not new anymore. Find more Ask the Editor segments here at merriam-webster.com.
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
