We Just Disagree
I dropped Paul Brians a line yesterday regarding Tuesday's post about "abolition" versus "abolishment". Here's what I wrote:
When I was searching your handy site--specifically, the "More Errors" page--one of the first things I saw was that "abolishment" is listed as an erroneous form of "abolition". This surprised me greatly, because "abolishment" is a valid, current English word: the OED says so, Answers.com agrees, and the online dictionary that you yourself suggest to readers, the Merriam-Webster Online, also lists it under "abolish" (which means it's not just valid in British English, but also in American). I agree that "abolition" is probably preferable to "abolishment", but there's no reason we can't have two identical synonyms in English. It's hard enough to get people to speak and write correctly: I'd rather not confuse them further by attempting to ban perfectly good words.
And here's what he wrote in reply:
The OED doesn't call it obsolete, but it does have this usage note: "It scarcely differs from ABOLISHING n. on the one hand, or ABOLITION on the other: the latter is now generally used instead."
It's one thing if someone deliberately chooses the somewhat archaic form, but if a writer just can't think of "abolition" and re-invents "abolishment" as a substitute, few readers are likely to be impressed.
I can see his point, sort of: "abolition" is, after all, the standard, and "abolishment" isn't used nearly as much, although I think it's a fair distance from being archaic; Googling both terms suggests that "abolition" is about fifteen times as popular, but "abolishment" still gets over 650,000 hits, so obviously it's still a living word. The only problem with the latter term is that some readers or listeners are going to stop in their tracks and say, "Abolishment? Is that even a word?" (I'm not sure how readers are expected to tell the difference between a writer's deliberately choosing a word versus reinventing it, though; one of the glories of English is that we have a huge store of affixes that we can use to modify words at will, with the expectation that we'll be understood, even if we're inventing or reinventing a word.)
What it boils down to is that I don't think "abolishment" can be called an error, and so doesn't belong on a web page devoted to errors in English. "Abolishment" may not be the standard way of expressing the idea, but it's not an error, either. I think it's nice to have a whole raft of different ways to say the same thing: it enriches and vivifies the language. Even though I'd generally use "abolition", "abolishment" is clearly neither dead nor archaic, not even close, and I'd rather keep it in circulation than call it wrong.
When I was searching your handy site--specifically, the "More Errors" page--one of the first things I saw was that "abolishment" is listed as an erroneous form of "abolition". This surprised me greatly, because "abolishment" is a valid, current English word: the OED says so, Answers.com agrees, and the online dictionary that you yourself suggest to readers, the Merriam-Webster Online, also lists it under "abolish" (which means it's not just valid in British English, but also in American). I agree that "abolition" is probably preferable to "abolishment", but there's no reason we can't have two identical synonyms in English. It's hard enough to get people to speak and write correctly: I'd rather not confuse them further by attempting to ban perfectly good words.
And here's what he wrote in reply:
The OED doesn't call it obsolete, but it does have this usage note: "It scarcely differs from ABOLISHING n. on the one hand, or ABOLITION on the other: the latter is now generally used instead."
It's one thing if someone deliberately chooses the somewhat archaic form, but if a writer just can't think of "abolition" and re-invents "abolishment" as a substitute, few readers are likely to be impressed.
I can see his point, sort of: "abolition" is, after all, the standard, and "abolishment" isn't used nearly as much, although I think it's a fair distance from being archaic; Googling both terms suggests that "abolition" is about fifteen times as popular, but "abolishment" still gets over 650,000 hits, so obviously it's still a living word. The only problem with the latter term is that some readers or listeners are going to stop in their tracks and say, "Abolishment? Is that even a word?" (I'm not sure how readers are expected to tell the difference between a writer's deliberately choosing a word versus reinventing it, though; one of the glories of English is that we have a huge store of affixes that we can use to modify words at will, with the expectation that we'll be understood, even if we're inventing or reinventing a word.)
What it boils down to is that I don't think "abolishment" can be called an error, and so doesn't belong on a web page devoted to errors in English. "Abolishment" may not be the standard way of expressing the idea, but it's not an error, either. I think it's nice to have a whole raft of different ways to say the same thing: it enriches and vivifies the language. Even though I'd generally use "abolition", "abolishment" is clearly neither dead nor archaic, not even close, and I'd rather keep it in circulation than call it wrong.
posted by pyramus | 3:37 AM
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