"grieve"

[Wilson Gray]

Cf. the old, ca.1952, R&B song, _Have Mercy, Baby_:

Have mercy, mercy, baby!
I know I done you wrong.
But I _grieve_ it all, my darlin'
So, take me back where I belong

-Wilson

On 2/26/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "grieve"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Cf. "to weep," used transitively in roughly the same way since the ninth century.
>
>   JL
>
> "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU> wrote:
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> Poster: "Cohen, Gerald Leonard"
> Subject: Re: "grieve"
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>
> The NPR usage looks like a sort of syntactic blend: "mourn (smb)". =
> + "grieve for (smb.)". The two expressions evidently became confused in =
> the speaker's mind.
> =20
> Gerald Cohen
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Charles Doyle
> Sent: Mon 2/26/2007 3:19 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: "grieve"
>
>
>
> Last week a voice on NPR was describing the situation in the movie _The =
> Queen_: "All of England was grieving Princess Diana." That transitive =
> use of "grieve" sounds odd to me, but I believe it's pretty common =
> nowadays, perhaps emulating the grammar of the somewhat synonymous =
> "mourn" (one can either mourn FOR or simply mourn a person who has =
> died). OED, s.v. "grieve" verb.8b, has "trans. To feel or show grief at =
> or for; to regret deeply. poet," with citations from 1598 to 1871. Only =
> the latest, from Browning, has a human object, and it isn't an =
> individual: "Nor any clipt locks strew the vestibule, Though surely =
> these drop when we grieve the dead."
>
> There's also a jurisprudential (and academic) use of "grieve"--both =
> transitive and intransitive--that I've been noticing in recent years, =
> which is absent from the OED: 'file or pursue a formal grievance =
> (against)'. OED gives "griever" (4): "one who has a grievance," from =
> 1830, labeling it a nonce-use. Googling "grieve" + "grievance" will show =
> examples of this "grieve."
>
> Charlie
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

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