Dear Expert

[Jonathon]

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.

The OED doesn't say anything specific about its origin. They just list it under "extended uses", though some of the other figurative uses of "odor" are a little illuminating. Some of them seem to mean something like "reputation", "esteem", or "aura". Those figurative senses go all the way back to the 1300s, so I'm guessing they already existed in French and then came along with the word when it was borrowed into English.

[rivka]

Some of them seem to mean something like "reputation", "esteem", or "aura". Those figurative senses go all the way back to the 1300s, so I'm guessing they already existed in French and then came along with the word when it was borrowed into English.

Ah!

Thanks.

[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?

Were they the Peter Wimsey novels?

Nope.

[sweet clementine]

my friend just texted me asking what part of speech "ladies" is in the following sentence:
"That sounds fun, ladies"

I knew of a vocative comma, so I google that and found a site that says that the word is actually called a vocative. I wasn't sure I trusted a random website on the internets, so I was wondering if Jonathon could give me a rundown of what's going on?

[Jonathon]

If you're asking about part of speech, it's just a noun. But it sounds more like you're asking about its role in the sentence (like subject or object or whatever), which is indeed a vocative. A vocative is always some type of noun phrase, whether it's a common noun, a name, or a pronoun, and it's used to address or invoke a person or thing.

Some more examples:

Nice job on that car stereo, sweet clementine!
Hey, you, do you know what time it is?
Hi, Mom.
Guys, where do you want to go for dinner?

[Ela]

I'm reviewing an article in which the writer broke up the word "finally" thusly:
Fi-
nally

That's not correct, is it?

[rivka]

I never remember all the rules regarding hyphenating words to fit them on lines. But the main one I do remember is that hyphens should only go where the dictionary has dots. (That is, at the syllable breaks.) M-W has fi·​nal·​ly, so I think that may make fi-nally legal.

I agree that it looks weird though.

[Ela]

Yeah, your explanation makes sense.

And, yes, it looks weird.

[Jonathon]

Rivka is correct.

The only thing that looks weird about it to me is that at my work, we don't allow any breaks of two letters or less (though Chicago allows two on the first line and three on the second).

[Ela]

Yeah, after Rivka posted, I realized that was the same rule I learned.

Not allowing breaks of two letters or less sounds like a good rule to me, though. The two letter break does look very odd.

[rivka]

Not allowing breaks of two letters or less sounds like a good rule to me, though. The two letter break does look very odd.

Yeah, it makes sense to me too. It's not one of the ones I can't remember though. Those had to do with which syllables were accented or something like that.

[rivka]

In various newspapers and other online sources, I have seen all of the following:
COVID-19
Covid-19
covid-19
covid 19
COVID 19
covid19
COVID19

Which is correct?

[Jonathon]

I think WHO and the CDC use "COVID-19", and that's what AP style recommends. I haven't seen recommendations from other style guides. Also, it's pretty common in British style to lowercase acronyms or just use an initial cap, so "Covid-19" is common there.

As for the other variations, I'm not really sure who's using them or why. I'm not sure you could say that one style is correct and the others are incorrect, but it looks like "COVID-19" has the most official backing.

[rivka]

Fair enough. Thanks!

[sweet clementine]

Just had a debate with my friend about supplemental vs supplementary vs supplement. We were talking about angles that add up 180 degrees which I was calling supplemental and she asked if it should be supplementary. After some googling I came to the conclusion that either works and she came to the conclusion that it should be supplement (and that supplemental is the most wrong, based on the absence of "complemental", while "complimentary" does exist). I definitely don't think it should be supplement and the explanation I came up with is that supplement is a noun and supplemental/ary is an adjective; I can point to that angle and say "you're a supplement" but if I'm talking about all different kinds of angles, the ones that add up to 180 degrees are supplemental/ary angles. I don't know if that is actually the correct explanation because I'm very insecure about my knowledge of the parts of speech. So Jonathan, to distract you from your recent hearing loss, can you tell me if the grammatical difference between all three of those words?

[rivka]

Angles that add up to 180 degrees are supplementary. Neither supplement nor supplemental would be correct.

Source: Every math book I have ever had. Also Khan Academy and a zillion other math websites.

[Jonathon]

Yeah, I think I've only ever heard "supplementary" and "complementary" when talking about angles.

As for the grammar of these words, supplement is the most straightforward—it's just a noun meaning essentially "a thing that adds to another thing". Supplemental is just the noun with the suffix -al tacked on the end, which turns it into an adjective. It looks like it was actually used to refer to angles and triangles starting around 1700, but it began to be displaced by supplementary around 1800. Supplementary is also just supplement with an adjective-forming suffix tacked on the end, so there's not much of a meaningful difference between the two. One word may be preferred in one context and the other word in another (for instance, I would say "supplemental income", not "supplementary income"), but it seems a little random.

[sweet clementine]

thanks guys!

[rivka]

Supplemental is just the noun with the suffix -al tacked on the end, which turns it into an adjective. It looks like it was actually used to refer to angles and triangles starting around 1700, but it began to be displaced by supplementary around 1800.

So apparently I just don't have any old enough math books for a counterexample.

(My dad has a handful of really old ones, but I'm not sure if any pre-date the 1800s.)

[sweet clementine]

I have another question! What is the etymology of the word "phew". I just typed it a bunch of times in a conversation and so it suddenly looked incredibly bizarre to me. Is it just an onomatopoeia?

[Jonathon]

I don't think onomatopoeia is quite the right word, since you're not imitating a sound with your mouth. The Online Etymology Dictionary calls it a "vocalic gesture originally expressing weariness, disgust, etc.," while the OED says it's "imitative, representing the action of puffing or blowing away with the lips." So I think it would make more sense to think of it as an exaggerated sigh or something along those lines.

[sweet clementine]

Ah, that makes sense. Though I'm curious how it ended up with a ph at the beginning. Just to differentiate it from "few" cause that seems a lot more considerate than English usually is.

[Jonathon]

Hmm. Good question, but unfortunately, I don't have a good answer. It never appears to be spelled with an "f" in the OED, but it also records forms like "pew" and "pfew", so I'd guess that sometimes there was a little bit more of a "p" or people just felt like the "ph" was more evocative somehow.

[rivka]

When did "daylight" become a verb? (Actual quote from a recent NYT article: "It’s important that we daylight that.")

[Jonathon]

I've never heard that before and can't find any hits for it in the Corpus of Contemporary American English,* so I'm going to say . . . just a few days ago?


*Though everything is machine tagged for part of speech, so it's possible that it's in there but has been mistagged.