"The joy of life is variety," said the Samuel Johnson we remember. "Variety is the very spice of life," cribbed the William Cowper we forget. Every man or woman who loves or writes the English language will echo their thought. We are blessed with an infinity of similes.
Ah, but this is the glory of English, that "similes" are seldom perfect similes. Beyond the realm of mathematics, where a square is always a square and every triangle has three sides, we find a glorious variety of choices. It is the writer's art to make them with care. Sometimes an influential factor is what "sounds right."
Consider the past tense of "to drag." It turned up on Aug. 20 in a wire story out of Kenton, Ohio.
The usual dictionaries give only "dragged," but there is a whole world out there in which things are roughly "drug in." The Dictionary of American Regional English identifies dozens of examples, not only from the rural South but also from New England and the Midwest, e.g., a mother fears her son "will be drug off to war."
Like the dialectal "brung" for "brought," the humble "drug" cannot be misunderstood. Why, then, do we shun "drug" and welcome "dragged"? Our inner ears wince. On this occasion, The Associated Press reported a story about two high school athletes. They were granted permission to play the whole football season even though they had been sentenced to juvenile detention for a prank that seriously injured two teenagers. The parental community took sides: Some thought the boys should be tossed off the team and formally punished. Others spoke up for leniency.
Arch Rodgers, principal of Kenton High School, was distressed by the acrimony. He said: "The worst part is this drug out so long, and the longer it drug out, the more it created friction in the community."
Granted, that was a direct quotation, and the AP felt obliged to quote the source directly, but in context "drug" approaches respectability. It is moving uptown. Seventy years ago, it was universally regarded as "dialectal" or "illiterate." The late, lamented Random House College Dictionary (1997) lessened the censure to "nonstandard." Discussing his debate with Bob Dole in the 1996 campaign, Bill Clinton recalled that the combatants received thousands of comments and questions that had to be weighed: "That's what drug it out."
Even with the genial imprimatur of the former president, "drug" doesn't yet "sound right." It's like "ain't." Merriam-Webster says "ain't" is nonstandard and "widely disapproved." Nevertheless, it is flourishing in American English, both in speech and writing. In some contexts it clearly just sounds right.
Other choices are more subtle. Often they depend as much on sound as on meaning, for we read not only with our eyes but silently with our ears. The past tense of "to dive" is either "dived" or "dove." The meaning is virtually identical. If we're reporting an aquatic competition, we might report that an athlete "dived" well. We also might report that last month millions of college freshmen dove into the rigors of college life. Or maybe the rigors dove into the freshmen.
(Readers are invited to send dated citations of usage to Mr. Kilpatrick in care of this newspaper. His e-mail address is kilpatjj@aol.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2006 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE