Dear Expert

[Amilia]

Interesting!  Thanks!

[Tante Shvester]

Can the adjective "piping" modify anything besides "hot"?  I don't think "plover" counts.

[rivka]

Can the adjective "piping" modify anything besides "hot"?

Wouldn't that be an adverb?

The adjective means shrill. Like a child's voice, or the plover.

[Jonathon]

Hmm. I'm not sure if a present participle can actually function as an adverb, but the OED has a subentry for piping hot and defines the phrase as an adjective. (And apparently the expression dates to around 1600. I had no idea it was that old.)

[Tante Shvester]

I was surprised to learn that the word "allergy" is only a little over a hundred years old.  It was first coined in 1911 by an Austrian doctor who was interested in immunology.

So what did people say when they wanted to talk about allergies before we had a word for it?  Was it just "I can't be around cats, they make me sneeze," or "I get itchy when I eat strawberries," or was there a common name for the condition?

[Jonathon]

I looked up "hay fever" in the OED, and it said that the condition was first described under the name "summer catarrh". From what I can tell, "catarrh" was used to describe a variety of things, including allergies, though I couldn't say for certain that it was the normal term for such things, and I don't think it would cover allergic reactions like an itchy mouth.

[PSI]

Ergh. I hope it's okay if I drop in and ask Jon a grammar question.  I've been transcribing for extra cash and some of my documents keep getting "corrected" in questionable ways.  Most of the problems I can sort out myself, but this one thing is really driving me crazy. Is it appropriate to use a comma after is in a sentence like this?

My opinion is, we should not eat soup for breakfast.

?

[Jonathon]

Of course it's okay to drop in and ask me a grammar question!

I think the problem with transcribing something like that is that it's pretty colloquial—in writing, you usually don't leave out the "that". I don't know of a specific rule in Chicago or any other style guide that addresses it.

I'm not sure a comma is really required there, but it might help with readability. Sorry that that was kind of a waffly answer.

[PSI]

No, it's not waffly.  I think it's right, and it's probably why the QA added the comma.  It did make it more readable, and that might be the ultimate goal in typing a transcript.  But I left the comma out because I felt it wasn't grammatically correct to use one to replace "that".  Maybe an apostrophe?

My opinion is'we should not eat soup for breakfast.

Huh?  Huh?

[Grammarly hates this post.]

[Oh, wow.  Is that my signature?  Where did I get that from?]

[rivka]

An apostrophe seems very odd. A colon, maybe?

[Jonathon]

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't do an apostrophe, and a colon seems too formal to me. The comma might not be strictly correct—though I'm not sure that it's actually wrong—but it seems to me that it's a lot like the comma before a quotation: "My opinion is, 'We should not eat soup for breakfast.'"

And anyway, I think it's okay to bend the rules a little bit when transcribing speech.

[Ela]

Someone posted elsewhere that he learned from reading a certain set of (British) novels that you need an apostrophe when you write phone - or 'phone, as he wrote in his post. The references I checked showed this is not currently accepted usage in modern British English, but I'm guessing it might have been at some point. I can even see why it might have been.

The references I saw also used "bus" (shortened from omnibus) as an example of a word that does not need an apostrophe. But I think I may have seen in written as 'bus in some older literature, actually.

Any information on the history of this usage?

[Porter]

I've seen that usage in places where a word is shortened, but the shortened word is not considered a "real" word yet.

How 'bout that?

[Jonathon]

I don't know much about the history except that it was a thing at one point. But a little browsing in the OED shows that the apostrophe before bus was infrequent, and it appears to have disappeared by the end of the 19th century. Phone mostly follows the same pattern, though it has apostrophized citations in 1941, 1975, and 1997. I was pretty surprised by that. And the last apostrophized citation for cello appears in 1930.

So it looks like it was an occasional thing in the 1800s but pretty rare after that. I think it's pretty much only in highly colloquial forms like 'bout and 'cause that we see it today.

[Ela]

That's pretty much what I expected. The uses I was aware of were pretty much from the 19th century. I'm surprised to see a citation as recent as 1975 and 1997, too. Thanks for looking into it. I was curious, after having someone post who seemed to think it's still correct usage.

[Ela]

I've seen that usage in places where a word is shortened, but the shortened word is not considered a "real" word yet.

How 'bout that?

That's probably what was going on, originally, when telephone was shortened to 'phone and omnibus to 'bus. At least, that's my uneducated guess. 

[Ela]

In other news, a language podcast I listened to recently made me start thinking about the word "moist" again. To be perfectly honest, I don't understand what the fuss is about. The word never bothered me in of itself and I never would have thought twice about it if it hadn't been for all the comments and jokes about it I have heard in recent years. It's just a word.

So what's the deal? Why all the fuss about it and why is it considered an unpleasant word?

[rivka]

I am 100% with you on this.

I have a sneaking suspicion they are making it up and seeing if we are gullible enough to fall for it.

[Jonathon]

I really don't get it either. My hypothesis is that someone didn't like the word for whatever reason, and the idea that it's inherently gross has spread like a virus. Someone tells you it's gross and gives you some gross examples, and then you think, "Oh, yeah, that is gross."

Honestly, I don't think it's even the grossest word in its semantic realm. Damp seems grosser to me, but I still don't have the same aversion to damp that some people have to moist.

[Ela]

Someone tells you it's gross and gives you some gross examples, and then you think, "Oh, yeah, that is gross."

Yeah, exactly.

It's cultural exposure. I wouldn't have given it a second thought, otherwise. Now I can't shake the notion that it's gross, even though I never actually thought it was. 

[Ela]

I am 100% with you on this.

I have a sneaking suspicion they are making it up and seeing if we are gullible enough to fall for it.

Clearly, at least some of us are. 

[rivka]

What is the origin of the expression of being "in good odor"? I just used it and my son asked me about it. I told him it was synonymous with being "looked upon with favor", but involved a different part of the face.

I can't find an etymology, though.

[Ela]

That's an expression? I've literally never heard that one. I wonder how common it is. Maybe it's regional?

[rivka]

It's somewhat old-fashioned. One place I found that uses it is a book from 1906.

But it is still in use. http://www.grubstreet.com/2010/05/first_look_who_feels_anthony_b.html

[Kate Boots]

Someone posted elsewhere that he learned from reading a certain set of (British) novels that you need an apostrophe when you write phone - or 'phone, as he wrote in his post. The references I checked showed this is not currently accepted usage in modern British English, but I'm guessing it might have been at some point. I can even see why it might have been.

The references I saw also used "bus" (shortened from omnibus) as an example of a word that does not need an apostrophe. But I think I may have seen in written as 'bus in some older literature, actually.

Any information on the history of this usage?

Were they the Peter Wimsey novels?