The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, Revised Edition

339 gourmandise | graffiti
2 Gourmand is either pronounced in a
Gallic manner as /'guamâ/ or Anglicized
as /'guamand/. Gourmet is always /'guamei/.
gourmandise. See GORMANDIZE.
government. While preparing my booklet
The Spoken Word (1981) for the BBC, I
found that this belonged to a small
group of words that gave maximum offence
to listeners if pronounced in a
garbled manner, with the first n silent,
i.e. as /'gAvamant/ or even /'gAvmant/.
governor-general. The pi. form recommended
is governor-generals, but governorsgeneral
is still current as an acceptable
variant. See PLURALS OF NOUNS 9.
gradable, gradability, gradience. The
useful concept of gradability in grammar
and semantics was first extensively used
by Quirk et al. (1972) and by Lyons (1977),
and has passed into general currency. A
particular set of words can be seen as
forming a continuum of size, degree,
vulnerability, etc.,: thus few, little, much,
and many are gradable in that they do
not represent a fixed number, quantity,
size, etc. By contrast, words like single
and married, or male and female, cannot
be seen in terms of gradience: one is
either single or married, male or female.
Most adverbs and adjectives are gradable
{pretty, rich; slowly, patiently) in that it is
a matter of judgement what constitutes
prettiness, richness, etc. Others are only
controversially gradable, e.g. perfect,
uniquely). Colour words show that there
are considerable gradations between the
primary colours. This is not the place
for a full treatment of the concept of
gradability. Readers who wish to pursue
the matter further should consult Lyons
(1977). CGEL, and other standard works.
graduate (verb). There is no problem
about its ordinary intransitive sense {he
graduated from Yale in 1984; she graduated
last year). The newish AmE transitive type
he graduated Yale in 1984 is much more
controversial and is best avoided. It
should be noted that in AmE the word
is not restricted to the completion of a
university degree: it is also used for the
completion of a high-school course.
graece, -ce. See ANGLICE.
Graecism, Graecize, Graeco-. Thus
spelt in OUP house style, not Grecism,
etc., but the forms with medial -e- rather
than -ae- are customary in AmE. See also
GRECIAN.
graffiti, which are such a prominent
feature of our slogan-ridden age, is a
plural word requiring a plural construction.
Its singular is graffito. Before the
1960s it was mainly used by art historians
and archaeologists of drawings or
writing scratched on the walls of ancient
classical ruins, such as those at Pompeii
or Rome. In their work the (It.) singular
form in -0 and the pi. form in -i were
unfailingly distinguished. The spray-can
brigades of the period since the 1960s
have brought the word dramatically to
the attention of the general public, and
graffiti is now often erroneously treated
(cf. confetti) as a mass noun requiring
a singular verb. There are encouraging
signs that standard speakers are increasingly
recognizing that one such slogan
or message is 'a graffito', but it remains
to be seen whether a clear number distinction
between the two words can be
established and maintained in English.
The following examples from successive
issues of the same American newspaper,
the Daily Northwestern (111.),
illustrate the competing types: (24 Oct.
1991) A graffito in the fourth-floor women's
bathroom in University library reads, T have
been reading the same thing on these walls
for three years and I'm bored!'; (25 Oct. 1991)
The graffiti was left on a notepad hanging
on the door of the unnamed professor's office.
Other examples: {graffiti treated as pi.)
May I add a word in praise of the London
Library? I doubt whether any other lending
library can claim that the graffiti in its books
show such a concern for scholarship—TLS,
1972; The inscription on the fire engine in
New College cloisters is written in Latin and
so are some of the graffiti you find chalked
on the walls of Oxford lavatories—}. Morris,
1978; {graffiti treated as sing.) That haunting
graffiti inscribed on the approaches to
Paddington station—Times, 1980; T don't
need drugs,' the T-shirt graffiti proclaims—
Observer, 1981; Graffiti covers nearly every
inch of the concrete barrier, its poignant messages
seeming to fall on deaf ears-Gentleman
(Bombay), 1986; {graffito treated as sing.)
The sheer act of writing a graffito on a
women's rest room wall means that the writer
will put up with possible responses—
Multilingua, 1987; A graffito on the Will