In October 2017, I posted in this blog an article criticising Merriam-Webster's article on a point of grammar and usage. Not long after that, I wrote another blogpost, this time showing how shoddy Merriam-Webster (I will just call it 'Webster' hereafter for simplicity) is in its dictionary definitions. The first article reveals Webster's surprising weakness in grammar and usage and the second article exposes the Dictionary's inability to even get its lexicography right.
Recently, I read another article by Webster which essentially covers both grammar and lexicography and I will show in this blogpost that the poor Dictionary has no comprehension of either English grammar or the basic lexicographer's work of word classification or the need to pick relevant examples from past literary works, something which respectable dictionaries such as the OED are supremely good at. You will see for yourself how seriously flawed this article of Webster's is. Although I will post excerpts of Webster's article in this blogpost you may click here if you want to read the article for yourself.
The article explores the question whether you may use 'safe' as an adverb. As the title suggests, is it all right to tell someone to 'Drive safe' or should you say 'Drive safely'? Webster summarises it as follows:
the adverb safe is what's called a flat adverb. That is, it's an adverb that has the same form as its related adjective—like safe in "drive safe," slow in "go slow," or easy in "take it easy."
The article ends with this advice to its readers:
If you're partial to flat adverbs, you can take comfort in the fact that history—and the dictionary—is on your side. You may even decide to ignore the competing -ly versions entire.
But is that correct? Do history and dictionaries tell us it's all right for us to leave out -ly in all adverbs entirely or entire, as the article humorously concludes? Let's look at Webster's article more carefully.
There are three huge mistakes made in this Webster's article.
1. To persuade its readers that 'safe' may be freely used as an adverb, Webster seeks to show that other words were once used as an adverb and these are homomorphic with their corresponding adjectives.
This is a ridiculous argument. Not once does Webster show that 'safe' was used in the past as an adverb. We all know that there are some adverbs that are identical in form to their corresponding adjectives. The two examples taken from Defoe and Pepys are irrelevant. I will explain why Webster is wrong here by giving an example. If a child says, 'I goed to school yesterday', you cannot say he is correct because there are myriads of other verbs that follow a similar pattern. If your argument is 'goed' was once acceptable as the past tense of 'go', you have to cite examples of such usage. It's not relevant at all if you give examples of regular verbs that take the -ed inflection and make no mention of 'go'. Isn't this obvious enough? And yet this is precisely what Webster is doing. It argues that in the past other adverbs appear in the same form as adjectives but not once does Webster cite a single example of 'safe' being used as an adverb. How can Webster be trusted as a serious dictionary if it can't even get this simple point right?
I will give another example just to make sure my readers understand why Webster is so wrong in its approach. Supposing you want to defend the sentence 'Mary has two dog' as correct. You cannot say that since the plural of 'sheep' is 'sheep' and the plural of 'deer' is 'deer', 'dog' should also be the acceptable plural of 'dog'. You need to show examples of 'dog' being used as a plural noun.
2. The two examples Webster chooses are both amplifiers. They function quite differently from 'safely'.
This is different from Point 1 above. In Point 1, Webster's choice of examples shows a complete failure in logic. For Point 2, Webster's choice shows a total misunderstanding of adverb classifications. The only examples of 'flat adverbs' given in Webster's article are the two (from Defoe and Pepys) which are amplifiers. And it's common knowledge that in the past, there are many instances where the adjectival form is used as an adverb in amplifiers. Showing examples of such amplifiers is irrelevant because 'safe' or more correctly, 'safely' in the sentence 'Drive safely' is not an amplifier. It's an adjunct of manner. Anyone who has the tiniest knowledge of English grammar ought to know better than to give examples of amplifiers and stretch them to include an adjunct of manner. Webster has absolutely no excuse because it's the most important dictionary publisher in the US. It should have at its disposal a whole range of adjuncts of manner which are homomorphic to their related adjectives. Webster seems to suggest that any adjective can be used as an adverb because it must have been so used in the past. But that is simply not true. There are very few of such adverbs even in the past.
3. Even if Webster could show that 'safe' was once used as an adverb (which it has not even attempted to do), that does not make it correct today. Language changes with time.
Language dilettantes such as the writer of this incredibly flawed Webster article and the many journalists who write books on English usage without any knowledge of English grammar (click here for a list of my blogposts on this subject) will do well to save themselves the embarrassment of sounding like the ignoramuses they really are if they can remember this which I will print in bold for easy memory:
All living languages (including the English language) constantly undergo tremendous changes. What was once correct may no longer be correct today and similarly, what used to be an error may very well be perfectly correct today.
I can end my article here but you may still not be persuaded that Webster is wrong. So I won't end here; I will bolster the above 3 points with examples. You may also be curious about where Webster got the name 'flat adverbs' from. I'll begin with the origin of this unfamiliar term and explain in greater detail why Webster is wrong.
THE HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF THE TERM 'FLAT ADVERBS'
Don't blame me for delving into a bit of history but I am compelled to do so because Webster is so out of kilter with linguists today. Even if you are a student of linguistics, you may be stumped by the term 'flat adverbs' because that category is hardly ever mentioned in most comprehensive grammars. There is a reason for this. Linguists generally do not come up with a separate classification if there is no need for it. Webster defines a 'flat adverb' elsewhere as an adverb that 'has the same form as its related adjective'. But any student of the English language will tell you that that category is small and inconsequential. You don't make up unnecessary classifications just for fun.
But it wasn't Webster who first coined the term 'flat adverbs'. The folks at Webster are probably too unimaginative to come up with a name for any classification. It was John Earle in the 19th century who first coined the term 'flat adverbs'. The 18th and 19th centuries were a time when grammars came and went but most linguists today don't bother with them because most of them are, to some extent, flawed and aren't useful for the study of linguistics today. Today, linguists generally do not even mention 'flat adverbs' and if there is any need to refer to these attributes in adverbs that are identical to their related adjectives, we may refer to them as 'adjective and adverb homomorphs' (as in Quirk, et al, CGEL) but this is more a description of the the structure of the adverb/adjective than a name for a different category. Some linguists may talk about 'adverbs without suffixes' or 'zero adverbs' but these are somewhat different: they are far wider in coverage than Earle's concept of 'flat adverbs'.
Most linguists make no attempt to form a special category of such adverbs because there is no need to. Webster by picking the bones of abandoned grammars is resuscitating ideas that are discarded by most linguists. But I will show here that Webster is doing much worse than that. It doesn't just use John Earle's 'flat adverbs' when wiser linguists ignore them. It misuses and misapplies Earle's category of 'flat adverbs' and turns it into something that has never been a part of the English language.
In 1871, John Earle, a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, published an English grammar called The Philology of the English Tongue. It is in this book that Earle coined the term 'flat adverbs'. We will ignore the rest of his grammar and focus only on what he has to say about flat adverbs. Earle writes,
The adverbs rise stage above stage in a three-fold gradation. They are either Flat, Flexional, or Phrasal.
This is an extremely primitive division of the adverb and it's no longer followed by linguists today. Earle describes the adverb as the 'tertiary presentive word', the substantive being primary and adjectival and verbal words being secondary.
To understand how much Earle's classification differs from standard grammar, we need only to look at how he defines his 'flat adverbs':
The Flat Adverb is simply a substantive or an adjective placed in an adverbial position.
Anyone who knows English grammar will immediately understand from this simple definition that Earle's idea of the 'flat adverb' is much broader than what Webster in its abysmal ignorance understands it to be. Earle then goes on to give examples of the flat adverb.
If you look at the examples Earle gives for his flat adverbs you will understand why I react so strongly to Webster's article. Unlike Webster whose only two examples are all of amplifiers, Earle gives a lot of examples that include adverbs of manner. Of course many of Earle's examples are of amplifiers. I have already said that it's common knowledge to anyone who has the smallest understanding of English usage that amplifiers make up the majority of such adverbs in the past. I knew that even long before I studied English grammar when I was a devout altar boy with a good knowledge of the KJV Bible which was then commonly used. Offhand, without consulting anything, I can think of biblical examples which should be known to anyone:
'I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.' Or the Christmas message: 'The angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.' Quite apart from the Bible, Shakespeare's 'passing strange' also leaps to mind.
That Webster only gave two examples and both are of amplifiers is a sure indication that whoever wrote that Webster's article has no understanding of the English language whatsoever. If one has to use Earle's coined term 'flat adverbs', the least one can do is to give some of the better examples from Earle's book instead of picking only intensifying adverbs, as Webster did.
Earle also makes references to words from OE or Anglo-Saxon of which he is an expert and concludes as follows:
The flat adverb is in fact rustic and poetic, and both for the same reason, namely, because it is archaic. Out of poetry it is for the most part an archaism, but it must not therefore be set down as a rare, or exceptional, or capricious mode of expression... The flat adverb is all but universal with the illiterate. But among literary persons it is hardly used (a few phrases excepted), unless with a humorous intention.
Webster seems to have missed this conclusion of Earle's totally.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS FLAT ADVERBS AFTER JOHN EARLE
As we have seen above, Earle's view of the flat verb does not at all lend support to the free rein Webster seems to advocate in its article. However, there seems to be a change in the position taken by grammarians in the early 20th century. Henry Fowler in 1926 referred with disapproval to the encroachments of -ly into adverbs that have traditionally existed without it. This position was endorsed by Sir Ernest Gowers in the 1960s. But we must bear in mind that both Fowler and Gowers only confine such adverbs to a fixed number of adverbs. These adverbs are to be distinguished from the examples of Earle's flat adverbs which he drew from much older works of literature, in particular, poetry.
So, who is right? On the one hand, we have John Earle relegating 'flat adverbs' to archaic, illiterate or provincial usage while on the other hand, we see early 20th century grammarians who see the -ly suffix as an encroachment for a fixed group of words. In a sense, both views are not mutually exclusive. Earle is speaking generally of 'flat adverbs' and from the examples that he gives, it is obvious that these are words which are indeed outdated when used as adverbs even in the 19th century. When Fowler and Gowers said that idiom preferred the adverbs without -ly, they were only referring to the limited fixed adverbs or fixed phrases, many of which today continue to exist without -ly.
What idiom preferred at the time of Fowler or even Gowers is not relevant to us today if today's usage tends towards adverbs with -ly even for some of these limited adverbs. And that is precisely what has happened. Today's linguists recognise this. David Crystal in his remarkably insightful examination of Fowler's Modern English Usage observes,
The 'encroachments of -ly' have continued to make many people avoid the -ly-less form in formal speech and writing. Today, -ly-less forms can sound odd.
This brings me to the final point which is the most important point that Webster stupidly misses:
ALL LANGUAGES UNDERGO CHANGE
Samuel Johnson, the author of the first reasonably respectable English dictionary, after talking about the changeability of language, quite accurately observes that no lexicographer can possibly embalm the English language and secure it. He goes on to say that
sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.
And we see that all the time. The English language has seen all kinds of changes, some of which are the direct result of embarrassing errors that English speakers made. A good example is the word 'apron'. It's a word that did not start its life being called that. It started off as a 'napron', from Old French 'nape' or 'nappe' i.e. tablecloth, from where we get the word 'napkin'. But over the years, 'a napron' soon became 'an apron' in the minds of a significant number of people who probably couldn't read or write and somehow it stuck. Today, it's irreversibly an apron and however pedantic you may choose to be, you are wrong if you call it a napron. What was right is now wrong and what was a mistake is now the only way the word is pronounced or spelt.
We don't even have to go so far back to a time when an apron was correctly called a napron. In 1941, at the start of the Second World War, Winston Churchill, always a stickler for good grammar, said this in Parliament, which I quote verbatim:
This power of recall is contrary to the best interests and dignity of Parliament, and the whole Parliamentary tradition as built up in this country, which is at once the cradle and citadel of Parliamentary government, is adverse to it.
Churchill would have blushed if he had said that today. But that was perfectly correct and grammatical in 1941 and that was only 80 years ago. What was correct then is incorrect today. You can read his entire 27 February 1941 speech in Hansard and see if you can spot any other language errors although I very much doubt there are many.
Finally, I will just say a few words about set phrases. A set phrase that drops the adverbial -ly in conformity with idiom cannot be used (as Webster does) as an analogy to justify the general use of such an adverb without the -ly suffix. Mere common sense in a young child will tell him that. You may tell the driver of a car to 'Go slow!' but you will never say 'The driver slow drove his car in the heavy downpour'. That Webster is unable to see the difference is surprising.
At no time am I arguing that 'Drive safe' is absolutely wrong. In an informal context, you can be as brief as you choose to be. But Webster is wrong to argue that it's perfectly correct because in the past, there were other words that didn't take the -ly form in adverbial construction that they do today. And of course Webster's advice to its readers that they can freely drop the -ly in adverbs as long as they 'are partial to flat adverbs' is utter rubbish.
EDITOR (24 August 2021): A reader just reminded me that I wrote something in this blog 6 years ago about how changeable the language is: Click here for the blogpost. I have just read it and I'm glad I picked a different example in this blogpost - 'apron' instead of 'adder' which was the example I gave in that earlier blogpost. If I have to write another article on language change 6 years from now, I hope I will remember to talk about 'umpire' instead of 'adder' or 'apron' which are examples already in this blog. LOL
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