Karin Ciano, BridgeTower Media Newswires
Lovers of the English language recognize that our beloved is mutable and constantly evolving. To avoid usage faux pas, many of us venerate guides that advise what is á la mode.
One such guide, Bryan Garner's Modern American Usage, posits five stages of language change. The proposed usage is "rejected" at stage 1, "widely shunned" at stage 2, "widespread but . . ." at stage 3, and "ubiquitous but . . . " at stage 4. Only at stage 5 is a particular usage "fully accepted." In the field, however, I find it more helpful to contemplate the stages first set forth by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.
Consider my recent experience with the word purposely. I cannot remember ever seeing the word purposely before I was in my early 40s (not all that long ago, smartypants). Instead I grew up with the word purposefully, meaning intentionally or deliberately, and used purposefully in this way consistently and with confidence for decades without correction. My belief in the rightness of purposefully grew deep roots, and the thought that an alternative word existed never entered my mind. I was deep in denial, the first stage.
Eventually, the word purposely slunk across my screen in the writing of those who (I assumed) should know better. It happened over and over, and then I started seeing it in print (millennial readers, that's how we old folks refer to writing that has been professionally edited for publication). My eyes weary of rolling, I grew increasingly frustrated - and entered the second stage, anger.
In grammar geeks, this stage can last quite a while. Who are these fools using purposely, I asked myself. Don't they understand that purposely is not a word? Where are the copy editors and proofreaders? Why doesn't anybody look it up?
Why indeed. I didn't look it up myself until after a grammar-nerd boss battle, in which I presumed to challenge the use of purposely by a far more experienced and authoritative source. I was embarrassed for us both that such a correction needed to be made, and decided to marshal authorities to support my position.
The results, as they say, surprised me.
First I went to an online dictionary and discovered - shock! - that purposely was indeed a word. Worse, it was defined as "deliberately, intentionally" -exactly how I have always used purposefully.
Enter the third stage, bargaining. Surely this use of purposely must be new? How could I have missed it? I raced purposely against purposefully in Google's Ngram Viewer, fully expecting purposefully to triumph. It didn't. Instead, I discovered, purposely had dominated English until the late 1800s, at which point upstart purposefully had entered the market, but purposely remained in wider circulation. Back to denial: surely this could not be right. I looked to Garner for support... and got none.
Garner (Modern American Usage) defines purposely as "on purpose, intentionally" and purposefully as "with a specific purpose in mind; with the idea of accomplishing a certain result." Shock. If Garner is right, then I have never used purposefully correctly. (Garner lists "purposefully misused for purposely" as stage 1 on his Language Change Index. Ouch.)
I continued to bargain - I mean, research. Online articles kept popping up about purposely vs. purposefully, all of them confirming Garner's view. Was I crazy? Somewhere, surely, an authority must validate the meaning of purposefully as I have so long understood it. I turned at last to my rock, the Oxford English Dictionary.
As often happens, the OED giveth... and taketh away. The tail end of its definition of "purposeful" included "designed, intentional" - so at least I knew I was not crazy. But no further comfort was on offer. The OED confirmed that purposely was three and a half centuries older than purposefully and that it meant "of set purpose; on purpose; by design; designedly; intentionally; deliberately." Oh, and Shakespeare used it. In Titus Andronicus, to be sure, but still.
Sigh. I could make the case that purposefully makes more structural sense: if purposeful means intentional, then purposefully should mean intentionally. It. Makes. More. Sense. We don't say intentionly, or thoughtly, or gracely. Also, purposefully in the sense of "full of purpose" - as in, "she walked purposefully down the corridor" - is so narrow, redundant, and silly (and so close to purposely's territory as to make trespassing inevitable) that purposefully no longer serves any purpose.
So here I am firmly in the grip of stage four, depression. I am mourning the loss of a useful, familiar, and beloved word I have known since childhood. A part of me remains angry at having to re-learn something I thought I understood, resentful of the effort required to re-wire my brain to speak and write differently. And some part of me, perhaps, carries a candle for eventual vindication; perhaps it will turn out that I was right.
I'm not right, of course; I'm just not done working the stages. Mourning a word is like losing a friend. Fully inhabiting the English language means we will have to mourn old friends and welcome new ones constantly, for our language's adaptability and flexibility are the sources of its strength. I will be done grieving when I can finally accept-intentionally, thoughtfully, gracefully, I hope-that what I "knew" about purposely is no longer what I know.
Published: Thu, Sep 07, 2017
