Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Best Word Ever!

In Honor of this being my last Honor's Blog Posting I found the most absolutely fabulous word:
Honorificabilitudinitatibus 

which is pronounced as /anɛrɛɪfɪkɛˈbɪlɪtjuɪnætɪbɛs/.

Shakespeare used this word in his play "Love's Labour's Lost"

“O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.” 

Shakespear did not create the word, it first appears — in the Latin form honōrificābilitūdo in the 1187 and then takes in the Italian form honōrificābilis in the late 1300's. Both words mean honorable. 

Shakespeare is not the only late great to use this little gem, James Joyce used it in his novel "Ulysses" 

"Like John o'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country."

More recently the U.S. News & World Report, in 1993, used the original form of the word when addressing a debate going on in the world of Scrabble:

"Honorificabilitudinity and the requirements of Scrabble fans dictated that the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary's makers be open-minded enough to include dweeb (a boringly conventional person), droob (an unprepossessing or contemptible person, esp. a man), and droog (a member of a gang: a young ruffian)."


By far the greatest fact about Honorificabilitudinitatibus is that it is the longest word that alternates constants and vowels from beginning to end. 

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Dahl's Language

Based off of the post mentioning Roald Dahl, I looked into him a little more. I knew that my daughter has a very cute dress made by Hanna Andersson, that is from the Roald Dahl collection, it has letters all over it, I highly recommend it. :)
I was surprised to learn all that he had written, and what a profound influence he has had on language....on words. 

Here are some of the "greatest" words (I believe) that Roald Dahl has created through his various writings:

1. Argy (verb): If giants or human beans or cattlerpiddlers are argying, they are having an argument.
“One of the biggest chatbags is the cattlepiddlers ... They is argying all the time about who is going to be the prettiest butterfly.” -The BFG

2. Biffsquiggled (adjective): If you feel biffsquiggled, you are confused or puzzled.
“’You must not be giving up so easy,’ the BFG said calmly. ‘The first titchy bobsticle you meet and you begin shouting you is biffsquiggled.’” -The BFG

3. Bibble (verb): When something bibbles, it makes a soft gurgling sound.
“All around them lay the vast black ocean, deep and hungry. Little waves were bibbling against the side of the peach.” -James and the Giant Peach

4. Bish (verb): If you bish something, you ruin it.
“’This is it!’ he whispered to himself under his breath. ‘The greatest moment of my life is coming up now! I mustn’t bish it. I mustn’t bosh it! I must keep very calm.’” -Esio Trot

5. Bundongle (noun): A bundongle is something that contains only air.
“I thought all human beans is full of brains, but your head is emptier than a bundongle.” -The BFG

6. Catasterous (adjective): A catasterous situation is very bad indeed, and a catasterous disastrophe is the worst of all.
“’Catasterous!’ cried the BFG. ‘Upgoing bubbles is a catasterous disastrophe!’” -The BFG

7. Churgle (verb): When you churgle, you gurgle with laughter.
“The fact that it was none other than Boggis’s chickens they were going to eat made them churgle with laughter every time they thought of it.” -Fantastic Mr. Fox

8. Crodsquinkled (adjective): If a giant is crodsquinkled, he is in a hopeless situation.
“’I is slopgroggled!’ squakwed the Gizzardgulper. ‘I is crodsquinkled!’ yowled the Bloodletter.” -The BFG

9. Daddle (verb): If you daddle, you run very fast.
“So start to run! Oh, skid and daddle / Through the slubber slush and sossel! / Skip jump hop and try to skaddle! / All the grobes are on the roam!” -Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

10. Darksome (adjective): Dark and murky.
“’This one is a nasty fierce bogrotting nightmare ... I would be hating to get this one inside me on a darksome night.’ the BFG said.” -The BFG


In honor of Dahl's birth month in September 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary updated its latest edition today with six new words connected to Dahl’s writing, This past May, the Oxford University Press also published a Roald Dahl Dictionary complete with 8,000 words coined or popularized by the author.

New entries:

Dahlesque

The characteristics of Dahl’s work—in the OED’s words, “eccentric plots, villainous or loathsome adult characters, and gruesome or black humour”—now have their own adjective. The term was first used in 1983 by the literary magazine Books Ireland.

Golden ticket

These refer to the tickets hidden in chocolate bars that granted access to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964). The first golden ticket, however, was awarded to 18th century painter William Hogarth, giving him admission to the Vauxhall Gardens in London, in recognition of his paintings of the venue.

Human bean

This is a mispronunciation of “human being,” uttered by the giant in The BFG (1982): “We is having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean. The human bean is not a vegetable.” The first instance of the phrase is over a century older, having been used in an issue of the British satirical magazine Punch in 1842.

Oompa Loompa

The diminutive factory workers who played music and danced in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were made more famous by the 1971 film adaption of the book, starring Gene Wilder. Gupta called the phrase “typical Dahlesque,” reflecting how the author played with sound to convey meaning.

Scrumdiddlyumptious

“Extremely scrumptious; excellent, splendid; (esp. of food) delicious.” Although the word was first found in The American Thesaurus of Slang in 1942, Dahl’s giant’s use of it planted it firmly in the minds of every child who read The BFG: “Every human bean is diddly and different. Some is scrumdiddlyumptious and some is uckyslush.”

Witching hour

Referred to in The BFG as “a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.” We can thank Shakespeare for this evocative phrase: according to the OED, “witching time” first appeared in

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Monkey See Monkey Do

I was interested in how we "know" if one actually "knows" a language. A professor in one of my classes posed this scenario and gave the following answers.


Suppose some scientific group claimed, in the New York Times,
 that a chimpanzee can truly “talk” using a natural sign language.


1. Capacity question: For this claim to be true, the chimpanzee would probably need to 
Be curious about what new words mean.
Know at least 1,000 words.
Be able to ask questions.
Can tell you if a sequence is ungrammatical


2. Philosophically motivated question:  Issues raised by the chimpanzee's alleged capacity include

Whether the chimpanzee learned the language with very little instruction.
Whether its language knowledge draws on innate capacities.
How much of the language ability depends on being smart.


3. History of psychological theories issues:  If the chimpanzee has truly mastered language, it probably explicitly recognizes that…

Different sentence constructions can involve the same agents, verbs and objects, but in different arrangements (e.g. passive vs active…).


4. Experimental behavior question:  If the chimpanzee has mastered the grammar of a language in ways similar to humans, it will probably (remember the assumption is that the chimpanzee has learned sign language)....

In an experimental setting, mislocate brief location of flashing lights as having actually occurred between phrases.


5. Acquisition question: In tracing the stages of developing knowledge of sign language, if it is like the stages of human children learning their first language (select all that are true and none that are not true)...
Sometimes the chimp learned exceptions to general rules first, but then, when he learned the regular rule, he used it on the exceptions, creating ungrammatical utterances that he got correct at an earlier stage.
At an early stage, chimps produce gestures that look like real signs but are actually a kind of visual “babbling”.
The chimp(s) seemed to learn the syntax rules in discrete steps.


6. Speech errors question: As the chimp's ability to produce utterances improved, if it was like human speech production…
Certain kinds of speech errors would reveal how words are fitted into phrase frames.


7. Neurology question: If it were possible to use brain imaging techniques chimps, and the neurological organization of the language is like that in humans, it would show that…
There are particular regions of the brain specialized for different aspects of language knowledge and behavior.


Based on what the chimpanzee "should" be able to do if it truly has acquired the use of language, I now doubt whether I have actually acquired a language....

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Post-Truth


This year's international word of the year, as declared by Oxford Dictionaries is:
POST-TRUTH

 The University of Oxford Press reported that the adjectives usage began to "soar" after the "Brexit" vote and the highly charged, and equally controversial Presidential Election. 

Oxford Dictionaries says post-truth is thought to have been first used in 1992.

However, it says the frequency of its usage increased by 2,000% 
in 2016 compared with last year.


On the short list of words being considered was: 

"adulting" Often used in phrases such as
 "I'm adulting today, I'll play Pokemon tomorrow." 

"hygge" Which in the Danish culture refers to being comfortable or feeling contentment.

Oxford Dictionary list the definition as:

Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief:

‘in this era of post-truth politics, it's easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire’

‘some commentators have observed that we are living in a post-truth age’

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Can we talk without ever speaking?

Is texting killing the spoken language? 

I pose this question because of a conversation with one of my daughters. 

Daughter: Mom can Kyle come to Thanksgiving Dinner with us?
Mom: What is his parent's number so I can call & discuss it with them?
Daughter: I don't know
Mom: Call Kyle and tell him your mom wants to speak to his mom.
Daughter: Ew NO! We talk on Instagram and snap chat; I don't have his number! And who talks on the phone?
Mom: You have a boy you call your "boyfriend," but, you do not know his phone number? Have you ever spoke to him on the phone?
Daughter: Mom you're so old! **Stomps off

Is this a real thing? Can kids have "relationships" solely via social media/text? 

According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, on teens between the age of 13-17, they found that other than texting teens communicate in the following manners:

Instant messaging: 79% of all teens instant message their friends; 27% do so daily.
Social media: 72% of all teens spend time with friends via social media; 23% do so daily.
Email: 64% of all teens use email with friends; 6% do so daily.
Video games: 52% of all teens spend time with friends playing video games; 13% play with friends daily.
Messaging apps: 42% of all teens spend time with friends on messaging apps such as Kik and WhatsApp; 14% do so every day.

86% said texting is their primary means of communication with friends; only one person said talking on the phone.

Maybe teens are just creating a new text/snap chat/Instagram language that will eventually begin to corrode spoken language but, I don't think so. I actually think their (teens) inability and/or total lack of practicing the act of speaking (actually verbalizing) on the phone will cause problems in the real/business world....unless they all work in the tech world and then, maybe not. 

Are the plethora of communication apps and the availability of technology destroying the need for the actual phone function on our communication devices? What do you think? 

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Not a Linguist

I am not a linguist. I am a lover of words with no appreciation for how words were created, formed, or morphed into their current state ..... I love them flat on a page, ready to be whisk me off to another time or place, I love them in a soft sing-song melody as they perform through rhythm and rhyme. I love words that fall off unknown lips through Audible, telling me stories of great and unfathomable adventures. I love that words can mend, they can give courage and strength simply by the timing, meter, and measure in which they arrive. 

With all that weirdness out of the way, let it be clear that the above loving relationship does not extend to the diagramming of said words, it does not cover the semantics or syntax of these words in which I think are the Bees Knees. Matter of fact, each time I come across either of those "S" words, I have to look them up....again! This week I decided that I would not let my inability to appreciate the study of language stop me from learning. I chose two "things" in which to study, to learn, to gain knowledge of, basically to become  Lord and Master of! Why only two? I am also a realist and I know my limits!

I could not "get" transitive and intransitive verbs. First I felt like the extremely small paragraph in our book did not have enough meat in it, there was nothing for me to latch on to. I read and re-read it about 35 times and came to the conclusion that perhaps we were supposed to bring some type of linguistic knowledge, or knowledge of verbs or maybe just knowledge in general, to be able to "understand" what was being said. It was clear, I had none of the three. 

I'm working (basically) with this information:

Verbs that are followed by objects are transitive verbs.
Verbs that are not normally followed by objects are intransitive verbs. 
Verbs can be both transitive and intransitive.

First Problem:

Any object? If the verb is followed by ANY object it is transitive?
**For a sentence to have a transitive verb then it must have a subject, a verb AND an object.
 (yes any object)
The test for this is Directly after the verb ask yourself Whom or What? If you can answer either of those then it is a transitive verb. 

Examples:
baked a pizza. *What did you bake? A Pizza <---- the object 
Baked is a transitive verb
She rode a bike. *What got rode? A Bike <---- the object
Rode is a transitive verb 

Second Problem: 

"NOT - NORMALLY" followed by objects? I feel like that should be clearer, don't you? 
Intransitive does not have a direct object**

Examples:
laughed. *What or Whom did you laugh? Subject and verb but NO object.
Laughed is intransitive. 
The book fell. *What or Whom did the book fall onto? Subject and verb but NO object.
Fell is intransitive. 

Both:
The choir sings the National Anthem. *What did the choir sing?
 They sang the National Anthem <---- the object
**Sings is Transitive
The bird sings. *What did the bird sing? NO object
**Sings is Intransitive

After creating this little tutorial I was still a little unsure but, I feel like it helps to relate 
Transitive = Transition
Transition means to move or change and for a verb to be transitive it has to move or change something (the object) if it doesn't then it is intransitive. 

Monday, October 24, 2016

Back Formation

While reading some previous information from class, I came across back-formation in the Harley text. When I saw the word a few weeks ago, I pretty much overlooked it and kept on reading. When I saw it again this week, it struck me as crazy-odd. I read it, and the explanation of it and thought, well okay obviously I do not have the mental strength to understand Harley so, I took to Google. I did hold out the slightest of hopes that there was a "back-formation for dummies," sadly that has not been written, yet. I went to about 25 sites and read the various explanations and definitions and thought, okay I need a nap - this is about as clear as mud! I have the meaning, or the description of what back-formation is and even some examples but, really and I mean REALLY what is it?! If there isn't a George Micheal (class TA) following me around telling me which word is a back-formation and which words are front-formation (totally not a thing but, definitely think it works in this sentence) then HOW is a girl to know?! The meaning I had to go on was the following: Back-formation is when a new word (or more exactly a form of a word) is created from an existing word usually by deleting something on the beginning or end of the word. Usually, the thing that is deleted looks like a affix (-er, un, etc.), and so this "affix" is removed, and we step "back" toward a "root" form of the word...though that root may not have actually existed historically. Not a back-formation, but an example of suffixes and roots, just for a reminder: un-lock-able. un- is a prefix, lock is the root, and -able is a suffix. Prefixes and suffixes are both types of affixes. So, for an example of back-formation, take the verb edit. Edit, in fact, did not exist years ago. There were editors, but no one was described as editing something. The -or/-er suffixes commonly denote noun forms of verbs in English (writer, worker, inquisitor, etc.), so it was quite easy to strip away the -or from editor and be left with the new verb form edit. Other examples of this: babysitting -> babysit resurrection -> resurrect burglary -> burgle televise -> television Yeah, so not very clear, in relation to my complaint which is this: We have the word babysitting, and it allows for the back-formation of babysit. How do we KNOW that? How do we know that babysitting was a word prior to babysitting being a word? Would we have to check the OED to see the first date of usage to discover which came first? I think in my brain somewhere it makes sense but, I can't explain it without wondering myself...which came FIRST the chicken or the egg?! I went to the smartest person I know personally, in the study of language at least, and one who quite possibly has the best beard of any TA at the U of A (said TA shall remain nameless as I did not get his permission to quote him or his smarticles on my blog). I posed the question above to him and he gave N-grams a new purpose in my life. The long and short of it is that while cruising the chip aisle at Walmart, and shamelessly watching a woman threaten to make her kid go to bed at 2pm for a week over a bag of Cheetos, I will most likely NOT have to decide if any of her warnings are words created by back-formation. As super fly, bearded guy put it: "You're over thinking it girl slow down!" This is a linguistics term, used in the linguistic (etymology) world considering I am only vacationing here, and not planning to move in; I'm really okay with just knowing what it means. So, if there are others out there losing sleep over back-formation and therapy/medication has not eased your suffering, know that there is help: N-gram! Put in your two words babysitting & babysit and track usage, below it shows that babysitting was in "use" and babysit does not show up until 1947.





Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Howdy Y'all!



Grammatical Idiosyncrasies

I am from the south - the "Dirty South" as people like to call it; meaning way past the metropolis of Atlanta, past the Malls and stately mansions, in the backwoods. Our town is so small we finally got our first red-light when I was 16, the nearest grocery store is 45 minutes away, and the only gas station in town has been there "since God was a boy," and Bo owns it. Bo has had three wives; number 1 was Lisa; he tattooed her name horizontally across his forearm. When they divorced he tattooed an "X" over the L, I, A and utilized the S to form his 2nd wife's name, Stella, vertically. When he married wife number 3, he kept up with tradition, tattooed an "X" over S, T, E, L, L, and used the A to form Amy, horizontally. I swear you can't make these things up!
While doing research for my paper this week I came across various kinds/types of idiosyncrasies, which I passed and kept hunting how the heck to do a phonological, syntactical, and semantic entry for -er (perhaps I'll go into the stroke worthy search in a different post). This afternoon while on the phone with my brother he said: "I got me a new car today alls I had to do was air up em' tires."
Let's pause here - I have eight brothers and sisters, yes my family is redneck, mainly because they think household furniture is acceptable both in and outdoors. It's perfectly normal to have at least two cars that are being "worked on" in the driveway and anywhere between 2-5 dogs running amuck through the yard (dogs do NOT live inside in the dirty south). However, my family is also the most amazing group of siblings in the world, some have gone to college, some have not, some are married and have kids, some do not. They love my mother with a fierceness that unless you're from the south, you will never understand. They love God; they love America, and the love John Deer! However, grammar may have slipped through the cracks here and there with some of "us." Okay, back to my story.
I was not startled or even alarmed when he said this; we just kept right on rolling with the conversation. After I got off the phone and as I was relaying the conversation to my husband, and  I made my best "Red" impression (side-note - we call one brother Red, that's not his name, we have just always called him that) and my husband cracked up! It was then that I noticed exactly what he said, which caused me to do some research.

What the heck is up with the Southern Dialect?

**This is only about"my" Southern peeps and in no way is a reflection of how all southern individuals speak**


Southerners often replace adverbs with their adjective counterparts: such as saying "That works real good "rather than saying "That works really well."

Often use "her" or "me" rather than "herself" or "myself": such as "I got me a new car" rather than saying "I got myself a new car."

Using a noun in the place of a verb or adjective: such as "I need to air up my tires" rather than saying "I need to put air in my tires."

Dropping the final vowel on a word while keeping the meaning the same: such as "I think ever-body should vote" rather than saying "I think everybody should vote" **Should be notated that things may be Bigger in Texas but, everything is plural in the south! We don't really do "everyone" or "someone" it's "ever-body, which is articulated like "err-bodi" all the time, in all situations.

More times than I should admit, Southerners will put a /t/ onto the end of a word, in the place of the -ed suffix; such as "I grabt me a sandwich at lunch" or "I showert this morning." rather than saying grabbed or showered.

Occasionally Southerner's take the order in which letters are arranged in a word, as a suggestion and NOT as a rule: such as "Can I aks you a question?" Which is probably the worse mispronunciation of any word ever and has got to be like nails on a chalkboard to a real linguist (which I most definitely am not!)

I could go on with the amazing language we Southerners have just made up, including words like cooter-brown, dagnabit, youins, shant, goldarnit, and on, and on but, I think you get the picture; we talk funny!

There has been much discussion and debate over just how and why the Southern Dialect is the way it is. It was changed, formed, influenced, created, and broken by the English who settled it, by the African Americans who were forced to work it. By the southerners who were cut off from the prosperity and growth in the North (mostly by their own doing) from the Application Trail down, the long-time practice of using children as free labor rather than educating them and this list could go on and on. I don't have an answer as to why some Southerner's speak the way they do, and why some don't. I grew up in the south, I went to the same schools my brothers attended. I was in my 20's the first time I traveled more than 100 miles away from home but, I would like to think I have my use of grammar, pronunciation and articulation under control. Perhaps there aren't just idiosyncrasies within the Southern dialect; maybe the answer is that in some "areas" the whole of the English language has transformed into a Southern language which is it's own separate entity, hiding under the umbrella of American English. Or maybe we just need better schools?? What do you think?

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Tongue Tied


Monolingual?  Bilingual?
           I read an article titled Bilingual People Have Improved Attention Control at nerosciencenews.com about researchers from the University of Birmingham that found "an enhanced ability to maintain attention and focus" in individuals that are bilingual (Zhou, 2016). Reading this article was a painful reminder of why all of my staff calls me pequeño jefe
All of my employees at work are 100% bilingual, while I am 100% monolingual. Of course, they have taught me the things not to say in public and some slang that will most likely get me kneecapped in certain company but, that only makes me foul and possibly in danger, not bilingual. In one of my psychology courses, we learned that bilinguals have an advantage over monolingual individuals. 
Bilinguals, who are completely fluent in both languages, “consistently outperform their monolingual counterparts on tasks involving executive control” (Bialystok, 2011). A bilingual for the purpose of this blog entry means a person who speaks two languages fluently and speaks both of them regularly. A monolingual is a person that speaks only one language. Executive control is a domain general ability, which is used by various cognitive processes, which shows up in the frontal lobe, and are higher level cognition control such as attention and working memory. 
Current research has shown that bilingual individuals can have an advantage over monolinguals in various areas. De Groot (2011) found that bilingual children perform better on cognitive tasks than monolingual children. It has also been found that bilinguals perform better on the Stroop Test, "a task that requires people to emphasize an items color and ignore it's meaning" in a study conducted by Bialystok (2009) (pg. 358). One most notable advantage of being bilingual is that " bilingual adults who have dementia typically develop signs of dementia later than monolingual adults with dementia (Bialystok, 2009; Bialystok et al., 2007)" (pg. 359). The belief is that bilinguals have two full vocabularies at the ready and when using one, they are constantly having to suppress the other one, therefore their executive control is greater. Miyake et al. (2000) found that the executive control system has three core components which are inhibition, updating, and shifting. When a bilingual is speaking one language, they are having to use these attention orientated abilities consistently to use and decided not to use one language or another.
There are some slight disadvantages to being bilingual such as possibly having a smaller vocabulary (Bialystok, 2009; Bialystok et al., 2010). Bilinguals may process language slower than monolinguals, and they may alter how they pronounce some speech sounds in both languages (Gollan et al., 2005).
Upon relaying this information to my staff they agreed, that yes, they were all smarter than me. Thus they began to call me pequeño jefe. In hindsight, this may have been information better left at school. :(



References:

  Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Green, D. W., & Gollan, T. H. (2009). Bilingual minds. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 10, 89 –129. doi:10.1177/1529100610387084
Bialystok, E., Luk, G., Peets, K. F., & Yang, S. (2011). Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 525–531. doi:10.1017/S1366728909990423
Bialystok, E. (2010). Global-local and trail-making tasks by monolingual and bilingual children: Beyond inhibition. Developmental Psychology, 46, 93–105. doi:10.1037/a0015466
De Groot, A.M.B. (2011). Language and Cognition in bilinguals and multilinguals: An Introductions. New York: Psychology Press.
Emmorey, K., Borinstein, H. B., Thompson, R., & Gollan, T. H. (2008a). Bimodal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 43–61.doi:10.1017/ S1366728907003203
Miyake, A. and Shah, P. (2000), Models of working memory: Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control (pp. 442–481). New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. 
        Zhou, Beinan and Krott, Andrea. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. doi:10.1017/S1366728916000869. neurosciencenews.com/bilingual-attention-control-5007/ (accessed September 10, 2016).

Friday, September 2, 2016

Am I on or in?

I am from the south, with that having been said, it's probably a given that we tend to have our own take on the English language. I know that we, as southerners, have some weird words but, since I am the speaker of said words, I tend to think they are okay. :)
My husband is from New Jersey and although he has lost his Jersey Shore accent the way he phrases certain things remain unchanged. My all time unfavorite is "on line." Not like he is trying to win us tickets to a Jason Aldean concert, so he went online to enter a contest.

He uses it in the context of:

Cell Phone: Buzz, Buzz (it's on silent he's in public & NO ONE likes to hear your cell phone ring in public)
Matt: "Hello."
Me: "Where are you?"
Matt: "I'm online waiting to get Scouts prescription at the pharmacy."
Me: "Oh, so they painted a line for you to stand on so y'all don't get lost? Like the girls have at preschool so they can find their way to the bathroom?  Or is it like the highway and you can only pass on the right? If so can you jump in front of whoever is holding things up?"
Matt: ............

He's usually hung up by the time my monologue is finished, and I find myself laughing at my own jokes, which is fine. Matt always says I am the funniest person "I" know! :)
This has been a long-standing battle so, to settle things once and for all, I did some actual research. I wanted to discover the truth about the correct phrasing and where it originated from. I needed this information for use on this blog and.........not at all to prove that once again, I am right. :)

I found a book entitled Common Errors in the English Usage which listed using the phrase "standing on line" as one of the common English usage errors made and that is was predominantly made by New Yorkers or Bostonians.

Um, that made me wonder, are people in New York, Boston, and New Jersey actually up there standing on line? Are the businesses in these cities painting up their floors to create order and reason in a world of unlined chaos?


While attempting to locate the exact spot that details the grammatical error, I came upon this article Stand on line or in line? Which deflated my "Yes I'm Right Balloon" a little bit. The author says that the phrase "on line" begins to appear in text in the 1800's.


"For example, here’s a line from an 1886 book called the Life of the Right Reverend John Barrett Kerfoot, First Bishop of Pittsburgh.
“The school-day began early—at five o’clock in summer, and at quarter before six in winter. A pleasant-toned, sonorous bell aroused us, and after eight minutes we were expected to be in the school-room, to stand on line in an assigned order and to answer to our names.”

**I decided that this information was from a site called quickanddirtytips.com which seems to me, far from scholarly so, I take their information with a grain of salt. (I then throw said salt out the window because it does not serve my purpose)

Finally, I came upon a New York Times blogger who posed this exact question Is it 'On Line' or 'In Line'? Unable to say a definite yes or no he created a poll (which I participated in mainly because I could not see the results without choosing a side) Below are the results of the poll with my selection included. 
** Results will change as others pose this same question, stumble upon this article, want to know the results and add their choice into the mix 



The definitions from OED for on and in:

ON:
PREPOSITION

Physically in contact with and supported by (a surface):
On the table was a water jug.


 ADVERB

Physically in contact with and supported by a surface:
Make sure the lid is on
Can I get into the car when the cover is on?


IN:
PREPOSITION
Expressing the situation of something that is or appears to be enclosed or surrounded by something else:
Living in Deep River.


ADVERB

Expressing movement with the result that someone or something becomes enclosed or surrounded by something else:
Come in.

There are numerous other definitions but, these are the first ones listed for both preposition and adverb forms of each word. Which I feel like is the proof that one cannot wait 'on line' unless there is actually A LINE! One can, in fact, wait in line due to those in front of and behind said person form a line. If they just stand around all pell-mell and crazy, refusing to form a line maybe we DO need to consider actually painting lines at the places in which we find ourselves waiting.......yeah probably not! :)
Although I am confident in my rightness......how do you stand? On or In line?