Further vs Farther

[kojabu]

Which one is used when?

[Porter]

If you're trying to sound sophisticated, you use further, and if you want to sound contrified, you say farther.

I've got nothing.

[Porter]

I wonder if the answer is like lay/lie -- some people claim there's a rule, but it's not one that's really followed much, except by accident.

While were on the subject, what about drank/drunk and dragged/drug?

[rivka]

I wonder if the answer is like lay/lie -- some people claim there's a rule, but it's not one that's really followed much, except by accident.

Some of us actually know the rules, and flinch every time one of you misuses them.

While were on the subject, what about drank/drunk and dragged/drug?

The verb "drug" means to administer drugs. It has nothing to do with dragging. Drank/drunk is like lie/lay -- it's a transitive/intransitive pair (I think that's the right term).

Farther and further, AFAIK, are synonyms. M-W backs this up, but seems to indicate that the usage is slightly different. Which makes sense, and I can think of examples, but I can't codify the difference.

Fortunately, someone else has done so. I wouldn't call that rule absolute, though. Not by common usage, or the dictionary.

[JT]

I use them interchangeably, because I'm confident that if there *is* a difference there ain't many who know it.

Lately I've been having trouble with then/than.

[Porter]

Some of us actually know the rules, and flinch every time one of you misuses them.

I prefer to not believe you.

[Brinestone]

I believe that, technically speaking, farther is supposed to be used for literal distances and further for metaphorical and literal distances. So, when in doubt, use further.

[rivka]

Some of us actually know the rules, and flinch every time one of you misuses them.

I prefer to not believe you.

So much for taking people at their word.

[Porter]

Touché.

[Jonathon]

farther and further

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage says that in 1906, a usage commentator named Vizetelly said, "Farther should be used to designate longitudinal distance; further to signify quantity or degree." Since then, most usage writers have simply echoed this idea, even though it wasn't based on educated usage in 1906 or at any time in the past.

MWDEU goes on to say, "Henry Bradley, editor of the F volume of the OED (published in 1897), summed up what he considered standard English practice at the time. He said that farther is usually preferred as the comparative of far, that further was used where the notion of far was absent, and that there was a large intermediate class of uses in which the choice between the two was arbitrary." This still seems to hold true today.

This is one of those pairs of words that a lot of people worry about, but for (I think) no real reason. You don't need to learn some tedious and hair-splitting rule in order to use them correctly, because you almost assuredly already are.

[rivka]

You don't need to learn some tedious and hair-splitting rule in order to use them correctly, because you almost assuredly already are.

Agreed.

[Jonathon]

drank and drunk

I'm sorry to say that there's no transitive/intransitive distinction going on here—it's just a case of the simple past form intruding on the role of the past participle. In a perfect world, it would follow the sink/sank/sunk pattern. Some people use drunk as a simple past form (as in "I drunk the water"), but this is apparently dying out.

The much more common error is to use drank as the past participle ("I have drank the water"). I'm not sure why this is so common nowadays, but I suspect that it's essentially a mild taboo avoidance; the word drunk is usually associated with intoxication, and nobody likes to imply that they were intoxicated when in fact they weren't. But like I said, this is just a hypothesis; I'm not sure how you'd even find out why someone favors drank over drunk.

Interesting sidenote: drank is far from the most erroneous past participle of drink. I once had a conversation with an insurance salesman who told me that with this particular company, I could get a discount if I signed something saying that I hadn't "drinken" any alcohol in the past year. He said it probably half a dozen times in the course of the conversation, and it's a good thing it was over the phone, because I cringed every single time.

[rivka]

What about "I drank the water" v. "The water was drunk"? Isn't that transitive/intransitive? (It would be in Hebrew. I think.)

[Jonathon]

dragged and drug

This one is pretty straightforward: dragged is the regular simple past and past participle form of drag. Drug is a dialectal variant. It's not in Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, Random House, or the OED, so it must not be very common.

[Jonathon]

What about "I drank the water" v. "The water was drunk"? Isn't that transitive/intransitive? (It would be in Hebrew. I think.)

Those are both transitive. The distinction there is active/passive.

[rivka]

Ok. How is that different from lie/lay?

[Jonathon]

I wonder if the answer is like lay/lie -- some people claim there's a rule, but it's not one that's really followed much, except by accident.

The interesting thing about lay/lie is that people don't use them arbitrarily—the error is almost without exception one-way. That is, people use lay for lie but almost never use lie for lay.

[Jonathon]

Ok. How is that different from lie/lay?

Um . . . in almost every way?  

Seriously, though, what part do you not understand? A verb is intransitive if it has no object (like lie) and transitive if it does (like lay). (Warning: grammatical terminology ahead.) A transitive verb is in active voice if the agent of predication is the subject of the sentence, and it is in passive voice if the patient of predication is the subject of the sentence.

[rivka]

Wait, I think I get it. You can't drink yourself, you can only drink something else. But you can lie down or lay something down. And those two are transitive/intransitive?

By George, I think I've got it!

[Jonathon]

Almost there, I think, but one important note: drink can be either transitive or intransitive. Most English verbs can go either way; it just depends on whether it's followed by an object. And there are only a few verbs that form transitive/intransitive pairs, like lay/lie and set/sit.

[rivka]

So in/transitive is different than non/reflexive?

If you use "drink" without an object, isn't one implied?

[Brinestone]

Not necessarily. For instance, run is usually intransitive, as in "I ran." But it can be transitive, as in "I ran a marathon" or "I ran the program on my computer." Likewise, you can use drink in the intransitive sense ("He drinks") or the transitive sense ("He drinks tea"). I suppose the intransitive sense implies that what he's drinking is alcohol, but grammatically, the "alcohol" as a direct object is not there.

[rivka]

Got it. Thanks.

[Jonathon]

So in/transitive is different than non/reflexive?

If you use "drink" without an object, isn't one implied?

In English, reflexive verbs are a subset of transitive verbs—a reflexive verb has an object, but the object is the same as the subject ("He hits himself").

Yes, you could say that there's often an object implied, at least with certain intransitive verbs, but that's more of an issue of semantics, whereas transitivity is an issue of syntax.

[Farmgirl]

Farther and further, AFAIK, are synonyms.

And, personally, I can't say either one.

I don't know why - but the diction of both of those words completely escapes me. I stumbled on them every time and they don't come out right. I usually end up trying to find a different way of saying it.

(I did have speech therapy as a child for trouble saying the '"r" sound in the middle of words, but this is the only example of that I am still plagued with)

FG