A Dictionary of Cont..

that was rich brown, or it might be a brown cake
that was very fattening. The ambiguity depends
on the fact that light and rich both have more
than one meaning. There is no such difficulty
with a dark yellow scarf or a pale brown cake.
English has a great many punable words of this
kind and usually there is nothing to do about it.
But in a case of this kind the hyphen can be used,
and should be used, to link the first two words
when that is what is intended.
4. The man next door’s radio. Sometimes
word combinations are hyphenated because the
whole expression is a genitive. This is not necessary
and a hyphen here is usually a mistake. We
write John Brown’s body, the King of Spain’s
daughter, and we should write the man next
door’s radio.
5. A two story house. Hyphens are helpful in
some of the cases discussed above because the
words themselves are being used in an unusual
way and may therefore be ambiguous. Words
are never ambiguous when they are standing in
their proper position in a sentence, unless there
is the possibility of a pun. A two story house,
a dark green dress, nineteenth century literature,
are all normal English and do not need hyphens
in order to be understood.
Hyphens are often used in expressions of this
kind, not for the sake of readability, but in order
to avoid what some textbooks claim is a grammatical
error. In the examples just given, the
second word before the noun is qualifying the
first word before the noun and not the noun
itself. It is therefore functioning as an adverb.
But these first words are all familiar as adjectives.
Some people have the mistaken idea that if
a word can be used as an adjective it cannot also
lawfully be used as an adverb. Therefore, they
argue, a construction of this kind must be wrong,
although so far as sound goes it is obviously
standard English. A hyphen is supposed to offer
a way out of the difficulty by creating a new and
respectable adjective form known as a “unit
modifier.” This is an artificial and rather silly
device. No printer’s mark that is not reflected in
the spoken language can have any bearing on
whether or not a construction is standard English.
6. First-, second-, and third-grade children.
When more than one term is theoretically joined
to the same word, each one may be given a
hyphen, as in the example. But some editors prefer
to omit the hyphens entirely in a seriei of
this kind. Thev write a third-prude child but first.
second, and third grade children. Either form is
acceptable, but they should not be combined.
That is, if the hyphen is dropped after first and
second, it should also be dropped after third.
7. New Jersey potatoes. Proper nouns are
never hyphenated merely because they are being
used as adjectives. We write New Jersey potatoes
and New England clam chowder. Actually, expressions
of this kind are spoken with a comma
break, but custom requires a hyphen and not a
comma here.
8. The New York-Pennsylvania highways; the
Boy Scouts-Bears picnic. New York-Pennsyl-
501 tenpins
vania highways means highways running through
New York and Pennsylvania; the Boy Scouts-
Bears picnic means a picnic arranged by some
Boy Scouts and another group who call themselves
Bears. No one who didn’t already know
what these terms meant would ever guess it from
the punctuation. Some sensitive editors believe
that they can relieve the situation by using a
small dash instead of a hyphen. But since few
people except printers can see the difference
between a small dash and a hyphen, this solution
doesn’t accomplish much. Less sensitive editors
sometimes ask a writer to recast the sentencethat
is, to say something else that they know
how to punctuate.
temporize; extemporize. Temporize applies primarily
to actions, extemporize to words. To
temporize means to act indecisively or evasively
to gain time or delay matters; to comply with
the time or occasion; to yield temporarily or
ostensibly to the current of opinion or circumstances
(Queen Elizabeth was chiefly remarkable
for her ability to temporize). To
extemporize is to speak extempore, without
notes. It also means to sing or play on an instrument,
composing the music as one proceeds, to
improvise. See also extemporaneous.
tend may be followed by an infinitive, as in it tends
to bring them together. It is also heard with the
-ing form of a verb and the preposition to, as in
it tends to bringing them together. The infinitive
is generally preferred.
tend; attend. Tend as a shortened form of attend
in the sense of pay attention to is now dialectal
(Why don’t you tend to your own business?).
Tend still means to attend to by work or services
(Ab used to tend bar over at the Dutchman’s
place) or to watch over (Tending sheep is monotonous
work).
tend; trend. As verbs tend and trend are interchangeable
in the sense of to be disposed or inclined
to take a particular direction, to extend
in some direction indicated (The coast from
there trends northeast). Although trend in the
sense of to have a general tendency is regarded
as obsolescent in England, it is still acceptable in
the United States. Tend, a verb only, is standard
in the United States but regarded as poetic and
old-fashioned in England. Trend is more used
as a noun than as a verb. It means the general
course, drift, or tendency (The trend over the
last one hundred years has been towards collectivism).
tender (verb). Aside from its legal and commercial
uses, tender, especially in the stereotyped
phrases tender condolences, tender regrets, tender
sympathy, tender congratulations, and the
like, is slightly affected, over-elegant, a little
pompous. It has been so, apparently, for centuries
and must have been an elegant vogue
word in Elizabethan times, if we may judge from
Polonius’s impatience at Ophelia’s use of it
(Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3).
tenpins; ninepins; ten-strike. Tenpins is a game,
chiefly American, played with ten wooden pins
at which a ball is bowled to knock them down.
The word is also applied to the pins used in such