Innovative Usage Thread

[alynnidalar]

I've heard it a few times in contexts where I would say "thingie" or "doodad" or the like: "Hey, while you're up, grab one of those twisty guys, would you?" But it's rare, and for me highly marked. I've never heard "dude" in such a position.

I may have heard "dude" previously in this position in a jokey sort of way, but otherwise, yeah. "Guys" is definitely not common or unmarked usage for/around me, but does exist in a limited way.

[Nortaneous]

How widespread is the use of guy or dude for objects as well as people? I've heard some people using it in California for at least a decade, but it wasn't common. But now I've been hearing it enough in Utah that I've started to use it myself without meaning to. Has anyone else noticed this, and if so in what places or dialects?

yes, it's common but not entirely serious

[Linguoboy]

Vasco...served her with pineapple Sumol and unsmiling vigilance.

Anyone else find this jarring or just me?

[Travis B.]

Vasco...served her with pineapple Sumol and unsmiling vigilance.

Anyone else find this jarring or just me?

That does seem... odd to me for some reason.

[Estav]

Isn't it a zeugma? Or if not, something similar. "Serve with [physical object]" and "serve with [abstract quality]" feel like distinct expressions for me, so "with pineapple Sumol and unsmiling vigilance" feels like it's coordinating things that aren't coordinate.

[Neon Fox]

It is a zeugma. "Take your hat and my advice with you." It's meant to be jarring, but it's not innovative.

[Linguoboy]

It is a zeugma. "Take your hat and my advice with you." It's meant to be jarring, but it's not innovative.

It's not the zeugma that bothers me, it's the monotransitive use of serve. I "serve" a joint of beef "with potatoes", but you I just "serve potatoes". Is this really a natural usage for y'all?

[Travis B.]

It is a zeugma. "Take your hat and my advice with you." It's meant to be jarring, but it's not innovative.

It's not the zeugma that bothers me, it's the monotransitive use of serve. I "serve" a joint of beef "with potatoes", but you I just "serve potatoes". Is this really a natural usage for y'all?

What about "We're serving free beer"? Is this not grammatical for you?

[Linguoboy]

It is a zeugma. "Take your hat and my advice with you." It's meant to be jarring, but it's not innovative.

It's not the zeugma that bothers me, it's the monotransitive use of serve. I "serve" a joint of beef "with potatoes", but you I just "serve potatoes". Is this really a natural usage for y'all?

What about "We're serving free beer"? Is this not grammatical for you?

Why would you think that?

Let's get back to basics:

We serve beer.
We serve everyone.
We serve everyone beer.
We serve everyone with beer.

It's only the last of these I have trouble with. What I understand is not "We give beer to everyone" but "We provide service to everyone who has beer." But the meaning of the original quote is clearly intended to be "Vasco gave pineapple Sumol to her".

So I'll ask again: Is the construction "serve [person] with [drink]" natural for the other fluent English-speakers reading this or does it sound odd?

[akam chinjir]

They're all fine for me; it didn't even occur to me that could be your problem with the first example. ("serve everyone with beer" is at least ambiguous, "serve her with beer" isn't for me, given that it's a pronoun).

[Travis B.]

I agree that "We serve everyone with beer" means that one is serving everyone who has beer with something.

[zompist]

So I'll ask again: Is the construction "serve [person] with [drink]" natural for the other fluent English-speakers reading this or does it sound odd?

Odd, but not quite wrong. We do have expressions like "plied them with cakes", "dined them with fine wines". It's also quite normal as a comitative ("we cooked the pork and served it with apples"). For that matter, we serve a dude "with a subpoena".

From Google, it seems that the usage may simply be old-fashioned. E.g some 19th century cites:

"I remember the prisoner coming into the shop — I did not serve her with Circassian cloth — I served her with a quarter and a half of muslin"

"When you have served her with meat, she should be asked what kind of vegetables she likes..."

[of gods, 19C] "...some served them with meats ; others sacrificed lambs, heifers, bulls."

[Linguoboy]

Yeah, I might not have blinked if I'd been reading a Victorian novel, but Sumol has only been around since 1954.

[alynnidalar]

Here's a weird one that my brain just did.

I was making a joking comment about a picture of my coworker's cat sitting in various containers, and initially typed "Boxes is serious business". And my brain accepted this as semi-grammatical, a standard part of "lolspeak". But the cat was also sitting in a bag in a different picture, so I revised it to "Boxes and bags is serious business". And somehow, this phrasing seemed extra ungrammatical to me. I assume it's because the phrase isn't just a plural noun, but is multiple plural nouns.

Do you guys feel similarly or is this just me?

[Linguoboy]

Do you guys feel similarly or is this just me?

They feel about the same to me.

[Whimemsz]

Do you guys feel similarly or is this just me?

They feel about the same to me.

Yeah, same here

[quinterbeck]

So I'll ask again: Is the construction "serve [person] with [drink]" natural for the other fluent English-speakers reading this or does it sound odd?

This sounds odd to me. I'd say serve has a similar ditransitive pattern to give: 'He gave me a drink', 'He served me a drink'

[Vijay]

It sounds fine to me.

[Salmoneus]

Definitely ungrammatical for me. Perhaps, as Zompist says, I might accept it in an archaic text, but in the modern world it wouldn't be acceptable.


Ars lande: I think it might be because we "repair" the grammar of || boxes is serious business || by inserting quotation marks (or syntactic equivalent), making 'boxes' into the name of something (for instance, 'boxes' is the name of a pen-and-paper game I played with friends at school - boxes is fun, but is not serious business). If you go from that sentence to || boxes and bags is serious business || maybe you're instinctive reading it as || "Boxes" and "Bags" is serious business ||, in which case it's ungrammatical again because the 'and' requires a plural. But it's tempting to do this because once you've established the first sentence as grammatical, and hence "Boxes" as a thing, you naturally read "Boxes and bags" as being that thing plus another thing. Which would require the plural.

But you could still read it as grammatical, if you DON'T view it as an extension of the first sentence, but come to it fresh, and make "Boxes and bags" the name of the thing.

Most famously, this occurs in the sentence "Dungeons and Dragons is fun".


So the question is, is one cat doing Boxes while the other is doing Bags, or are they both doing "Boxes and Bags"...

[Raphael]

Since Ars Lande mentioned Stranger Things in the Random Thread over in Ephemera, I was reminded of the semantic mutation of the English word mystery when it became a loan word in German.

In German, the word mystery is not used to describe the kind of stories that are called mysteries in English, or adaptations of such stories. Instead, back in the 1990s, the marketing people at German TV channels started to use the word to describe a kind of TV mini-genre consisting of The X-Files and those other 1990s TV shows that tried to cash in on the success of The X-Files - basically, TV shows that combine sci-fi and horror and may or may not contain supernatural elements. And it's still used with that meaning. I guess the derivation is that those shows are about "mysterious" things, or something.

I don't have any comments on all this; just thought I'd let you know.