[Ads-l] grieve, trans.

[Jonathan Lighter]

Most notorious? "I graduated college."

In editorial and professorial circles and among their hangers-on, that used
to mark you as an illiterate, even if you graduated Harvard with a four-oh.

JL

On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 4:52 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: grieve, trans.
>
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> > On Jan 23, 2015, at 6:38 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> =
> wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      grieve, trans.
> > =
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> > OED (8b) has 'To feel or show grief at or for; to regret deeply. =
> _poet_.'
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> > The cites from 1597 to 1871 are drawn principally from verse.
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> > Time to add "8c  To grieve for; mourn."
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> > The script of this week's _Sleepy Hollow_ employed this usage twice. =
> IIRC,
> > one expression was "He's grieving his wife and daughter."
>
> this is an instance of what i've called "transitivizing P-drop", and you =
> can find lots of examples, though i'm not sure how long they've been =
> around.  in any case, plenty of instances of "grieving his wife" =
> 'grieving for his wife' -- in addition to "grieving his wife's death" =
> and "grieving the loss of his wife".
>
> i see from my notes that transitive "mourn" 'mourn for' was criticized =
> by some 19th-century usage writers, though it seems to have been a =
> standard variant for a long time (as it is now).
>
> arnold
>
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