Search Results for: flat adverb

Just out: paper on flat adverbs by Morana Lukač and Ingrid Tieken

Posted on August 14, 2019 by Ingrid Tieken

Congratulations, Sandra Jansen and Lucia Siebers, on the appearance of your book, and to Raymond Hickey in whose honour it was published! As for Morana and me, we’re very happy that it is out, and in my case, just in … Continue reading →

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2015/7 Flat adverbs: acceptable today?

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Carmen Ebner

Here is the latest feature by a member of our project in the new issue of English Today. It is republished on this blog with permission fromCambridge University Press, which owns the copyright to this piece. The original is available at Cambridge Journals Online. … Continue reading →

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Who coined the term “flat adverb”?

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

Elsewhere in this blog I reported on the first quotation from the OED for the term “flat adverb”: 1871    J. Earle Philol. Eng. Tongue vii. 361   The Flat Adverb is simply a substantive or an adjective placed in an adverbial position. (This … Continue reading →

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Flat adverbs

Posted on December 13, 2011 by BtU Admin

“Flat Adverbs” are defined by the OED as follows: “Not distinguished by a characteristic ending, as an adverb which has the same form as an adjective or substantive, or a substantive used as an adjective” (OED, s.v. flat, adj., adv. … Continue reading →

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Usage guides… there’s no getting away from them!

Posted on April 15, 2022 by Robin Straaijer

Yesterday, I found this well-worn copy of Margaret Nicholson’s A Dictionary of American-English Usage (Signet 1958) in my local street library (see photo below) just around the corner of where I live. I realised that it has been just about … Continue reading →

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More prescriptive commentary in the Smiley trilogy

Posted on November 20, 2020 by Ingrid Tieken

My reading of the last book of John Le Carré’s Karla trilogy, featuring George Smiley, Smiley’s People (1979), produced two more prescriptive comments. (There may have been more, but these caught my attention, possibly because both are in the HUGE … Continue reading →

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Greengrocers, footballers, sports commentators, estate agents, television presenters

Posted on August 13, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

We’ve written about the greengrocer’s apostrophe on this blog before, but what about these other people, footballers (known for their use of the perfect when other people would use the past tense in English instead), sports commentators (who seem to … Continue reading →

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2016/12 Prescriptivism in English literature?

Posted on November 16, 2016 by Carmen Ebner

Here is the last feature by a member of our project in the new issue of English Today. It is republished on this blog with permission from Cambridge University Press, which owns the copyright to this piece. The original is available at Cambridge Journals Online. To … Continue reading →

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I’m good, I’m fine

Posted on May 27, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

About a year ago, Morana and I posted a survey on this blog to try and collect data about attitudes to the flat adverb. We wanted to use the data for a paper we were writing at the time. But … Continue reading →

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Hoary witticisms and other prescriptivist jokes

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Ingrid Tieken

In going through our usage guides, we occasionally come across linguistic jokes – not terribly funny, admittedly, but they apparently appeal to writers on usage. And they have done so from the earliest days of the usage guide tradition onwards, … Continue reading →

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