gender it’s potentially a comment on their sexual orientation, whether or not so intended. When gay itself is used as a noun, it regularly means “a homosexual male”, as in: The gays and lesbians gathered for the mardi gras parade. The abstract noun gayness also connotes homosexuality, though it was earlier just a synonym for gaiety. This new meaning for gay seems in fact to have been around before World War II in American prison and underworld slang, as a reference in Ersine’s 1935 Underworld and Prison Slang shows us. And British evidence from the nineteenth century shows that gay (as an adjective) had a slang role meaning “licentious or living by prostitution”. To say that a woman was “living a gay life” was to imply that she was “no better than she ought to be”. Gay is not the only English word to develop alternative meanings in the course of time. If we intend to target the older sense (“lighthearted”), either that word or one of its near-synonyms in elated, cheerful, merry, lighthearted or in high spirits is more reliable, and avoids any possible double entendre. gelatine or gelatin For general purposes, the first of these is the preferred spelling in Australia and Britain, the second in the US. Note however that chemists make a deliberate distinction between -ine and -in in the naming of chemicals. (See further under -ine/-in.) gender Style guides are still inclined to insist that gender is a grammatical term, as if it is not to be used in discussing the sexual/social roles of men and women. Dictionaries often reinforce this view, by labeling the use of gender to mean “sex” as colloquial, jocular or “loose”. Yet much very serious writing about male/female roles makes free use of the term gender. Some prefer it to using sex, with its inherent double entendre, while others use both terms, drawing distinctions between them. For some, sex is associated with individual differences, and gender with group ones; sex with biological differences and gender with social ones. Yet others use them to distinguish between physical/sexual identity and socially or culturally constructed identity. Gender appears both on its own, and built into compounds such as: gender-bias gender-marked gender-neutral gender-specific There can be little doubt that the word has established its place in this field of discourse. 1 Grammatical gender. In codifying languages grammarians have traditionally used the notion of “gender” in classifying nouns into groups. Where there are two types, the categories are labeled“masculine”and“feminine”;and “masculine”, “feminine” and “neuter” (= neither masculine nor feminine) where there are three. But the classification has little to do with male or female. Words for inanimate things may be classed as “masculine” or “feminine”, and what is masculine in one language 321 generalisations may be feminine in the next: a cloud is masculine in French (le nuage) and feminine in German (die Wolke). “Masculine”, “feminine” and “neuter” are just convenient labels for classes of nouns which take different forms of the definite article and of adjectives. In modern English there are no such classes of nouns. All nouns take the same definite article the, and the same forms of adjectives. 2 Natural gender. In English grammar we become conscious of gender in the third person singular pronouns, with he, she, him, her, his and hers. But here it’s a matter of natural (not grammatical) gender, since the pronouns are applied according to the sex of the person being referred to. So she is used after a reference to “mother”, and he after one to “father”. In a language with fullblown grammatical gender, the pronoun for “she” would also be used after any “feminine” noun, and the one for “he” after “masculine” nouns. Because the English pronouns are so firmly associated with natural gender, the traditional use of masculine forms to express generic human identity is now felt to be unfortunate and ambiguous, if not sexist. (See further under he and/or she.) Ideally English would have a common gender singular pronoun, one which could refer to either a male or female without identifying their sex. The pronoun it has only limited uses in references to animals and perhaps babies in scientific or impersonal contexts. This explains why they, the common gender plural pronoun, is increasingly being used in singular references (see they). The quest for expressions which are common in gender or gender-free has also put the spotlight on the so-called epicene words of English, e.g. athlete, patient, writer. See further under epicene. generalisations See under induction. genitive This is the grammarians’ name for what in English is often called the “possessive”. It refers to the form of nouns which indicates a possessive or associative relationship with the following word. In modern English the genitive is shown by the presence of an apostrophe and a following s, if the noun is an ordinary singular one: the child’s bike a lawyer’s answer the horse’s mouth Thursday’s program Japan’s building industry As those examples show, the English genitive covers a wide range of relationships, including possession, attribution and association, as well as location in time and space. The genitive often provides a neat expression for a more wordy paraphrase. Compare the following with the genitive phrases above: the bike belonging to the child the answer of a lawyer the program for Thursday the building industry in Japan 322 genteelism Note however that a genitive phrase with a verbal noun, such as John’s appointment is potentially ambiguous; it could refer to the person whom John appointed, or to the fact that John himself was appointed. The first meaning with active use of the verb is sometimes called the subjective genitive, and the second where the verb is passive, the objective genitive. The same expression could also mean “an appointment made for John (at the dentist etc.)”. The context should clarify which of the three meanings is meant. With plural nouns, the genitive is usually shown by the apostrophe alone, as in the grammarians’ term. For more about the use of apostrophes with plural nouns, proper names, and words ending in s, see under apostrophes. Note that although the English pronouns have special genitive forms, none of them take apostrophes: my your his her its our their Of those, its is the one to note particularly. See its or it’s. genius Like many words ending in -us, this is a Latin loanword which raises questions about its plural forms in English (see -us section 1). The English plural geniuses is used with the more common meaning of the word: “an unusually gifted and brilliant person”. The plural genii is only used in reference to mythical spirits, as in the genii of the forest. genre As its French pronunciation suggests, this is a relative newcomer to English. It is in fact a latter-day borrowing of the word which once gave us gender, and as gender once did, genre essentially means “type”. In English it has almost always been associated with types of artistic creation—with works of literature and art in the late eighteenth century, and music as well as film and photography in the twentieth century. In the visual arts, genre painting has acquired the specific meaning of “art which depicts scenes of everyday life”. In reference to writing, the term genre is variously used. At the highest level, it identifies the archetypal forms of composition, such as poetry, drama and novel. But it’s also used to broadly identify the purpose of a work, i.e. as comedy or tragedy, and its substance: fiction or nonfiction. Within any of those categories, genre can identify subgroups, such as biography, essays, letters and journalism within nonfiction; and within, say, journalism the subgroups of news articles, editorials and reviews. At these lower levels, individual genres still differ in form, purpose and style. genteelism The term genteelism is applied by Fowler (1926) and others to expressions which are careful substitutes for common everyday words. So obtain is a genteelism for get, and purchase for buy. Genteelisms are typically longer words of French or Latin origin, and associated with more formal styles of communication. They are gentle euphemisms—not intended to disguise, but to lend a touch of class to a plain reference. 323 genuflexion or genuflection No-one would challenge a genteelism which is used in deference to the feelings of others. But when they become the staple of bureaucratic and institutional prose, it’s time to rise in ungenteel revolution and campaign against them. See further under gobbledygook and Plain English. genuflexion or genuflection See under -ction/-xion. genus The plural of this may be genuses or genera. See under -us section 3. geographic or geographical As with other –ic/-ical pairs, the longer form geographical enjoys more widespread use than the alternative geographic. The latter is only familiar because of its use in magazine titles, such as National Geographic and Australian Geographic. See further under -ic/-ical. geographical names Writing geographical names raises four kinds of issues: r how to capitalise them r how to abbreviate them r whether to use anglicised or local forms of foreign placenames r how to check placenames with variable elements For the use of apostrophes in placenames, see under apostrophes. 1 Capitalising geographical names. Capital letters are used on all the nouns and adjectives that make up a proper geographical name: Darling River Gulf of Carpentaria Mount Bogong Simpson Desert Cradle Mountain Torres Strait Lake Eyre the Great Dividing Range Whitsunday Island Cape York Peninsula Geographical names like these usually consist of a specific word or words, and a generic word. So Darling is specific and River generic. The order of the components is mostlyfixed by convention.In North AmericaRiver is usuallythe second element (Colorado River, Hudson River) whereas in Britain and Europe it’s often the first (River Thames, River Rhine). With this dual tradition, we find that rivers in other parts of the world may be named either way in English writing: either the Ganges River or the River Ganges. So whether River comes first or second, it can be part of the official name, and therefore needs a capital letter. But when the geographical reference is clearly a descriptive phrase, not an official name, the generic element is left without a capital: the Canberra lake the South Australian desert Note also that the generic component has no capital letter when it appears as an abbreviated, second reference, or when it is pluralised in a phrase which puts two or more geographical names together: Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers. (See further under capital letters sections 1c and 3.) 324 geographical names 2 Abbreviating geographical names. There are standard abbreviations for the generic parts of geographical names, to be used when space is at a premium (for instance on maps), but not normally in running text: C for cape Pen for peninsula G gulf Pt point I or Is island R river L lake Ra range Mt mount(ain) Str strait Note that none of these abbreviations need take a full stop, since all involve capital letters (see abbreviations section 1). There are also standard abbreviations for particular countries, such as: HK NZ UK USA or US Within particular continents, abbreviations are available for individual states or countries—for use in lists and tabular material, or for car registration plates and distribution of mail. Those approved by Australia Post are: ACT NSW NT QLD SA TAS VIC WA The US Postal Service likewise endorses two-letter abbreviations for all 51 states, listed in the Chicago Manual of Style (2003). Once again, full stops are not used in them. Two-digit codes for some of the major European countries are as follows: BE (Belgium), DK (Denmark), FI (Finland), FR (France), DE (Germany), GK (Greece), IT (Italy), NL (Netherlands), NO (Norway), PT (Portugal), ES (Spain), CH (Switzerland), SE (Sweden), UK (Great Britain). For the abbreviation of compass points, see capital letters section Ic. 3 Foreign placenames—in anglicised or local forms? This is a vexed question in a postcolonial world, when foreign names are no longer preserved in their imperial form. Even in Europe, English-speakers are sometimes surprised to find that “Munich” is M ¨ unchen, and that “Athens” is Athinai to those who live there—and beyond Europe the discrepancies are even more marked, with “Cairo” expressed as Al Qahirah and “Canton” as Guangzhou. It is a reminder that geographical names are a product of our culture, and not always in touch with developments in other parts of the world. Political developments sometimes force us to accept changes in placenames, as when “St Petersburg” became Leningrad under the Russian communist regime, and when “Northern and Southern Rhodesia” marked their independence with the names Zambia and Zimbabwe. In other cases there’s a diplomatic imperative to accept a different form of an old name. Beijing and Sri Lanka are simply local forms of the names we had as “Peking” and “Ceylon”, but we need to update with them, to avoid seeming to be still in the colonial era. The updating of our geographical nomenclature is helped by the ABC’s Standing Committee on Spoken English (SCOSE). It not only checks the pronunciations of 325 geological eras foreign names that occur in the news, but also the forms of those names. The lead it provides in this area helps to alert us to changes, and to familiarise us with them. When using the new names in writing, we may need to remind our readers of the older form in parentheses, alongside the new one, at least on first mention. The change of the “Gilbert Islands” into the Kiribati is not self-explanatory. But recognising such changes in foreign placenames should seem no stranger than accepting the fact that Tasmania is no longer “Van Diemen’s Land”. 4 Placenames with variable elements. The variable spellings of personal names e.g. Phillip/Philip, Macleod/McLeod are another detail to reckon with in placenames. The question of whether it should be Stuart or Stewart can only be resolved by referring to the Master Names File, prepared by the Commonwealth Department of Administrative Services and updated every January. The divergent spellings of Australian towns and suburbs are listed under town names. geological eras The origins of our planet go back well over 4000 million years, with the evolution of plant and animal life from about 2500 million years ago. The history of human evolution occupies only a tiny fraction of the last one million years. For the standard names used in geology and paleontology for the major phases of earth’s evolution, see Appendix III. geometric or geometrical The shorter form geometric has fewer uses nowadays, though it is enshrined in some fixed collocations such as geometric spider and the Geometric Age (of Greek culture). But English “Geometric” architecture has become geometrical, and in maths and science, as well as in ordinary usage, geometrical prevails. german or germane These words refer to relationships, german to those of kin, as in cousin german, and germane to more abstract logical relationships, as in: His answer was not germane to the question. In older usage germane could be used in cousin germane as well, but this is now archaic. For more about cousin german, see under cousins. Note that a link between german(e) and German(y) is unlikely. Most scholars believe that the name Germany is Celtic in origin, whereas german(e) derives from a Latin adjective meaning “having common roots”. Germany After World War II Germany was divided into two: Federal Republic of Germany (BRD) = West Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) German Democratic Republic (DDR) = East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) 326 gerunds and gerundives The first was a member of NATO and the EEC, while the second was a member of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon. This division of Germany put Berlin into East Germany. It too was divided into a Western and an Eastern sector, and to mark the boundary between them, the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. The breaching of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 marked the beginning of a new era, and strong pressures for reunification. The two halves were officially reunited in 1990, as the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany). gerunds and gerundives Both these are terms borrowed from Latin grammar. In Latin the gerund was a verbal noun, and the gerundive an adjectival future passive participle which carried a sense of obligation or necessity. Our word agenda was a Latin gerundive, meaning literally “(things which) should be done”. English grammar has nothing quite like the Latin gerundive. Words formed with -able from verbs (such as likable) are as near as we come: they are passive, but do not carry the sense of obligation. We do however have equivalents to gerunds in the verbal nouns which end in -ing,asin: Singing is my recreation. Gerunds in English lead double lives, in that they can behave like nouns or verbs (or both). As nouns, they can be qualified by adjectives, articles etc., and/or followed by dependent phrases. My singing alarmed the dogs next door. The singing of grand opera caused the trouble. English gerunds also have the capacity of verbs to take subjects or objects, adverbs and adverbial phrases: Singing grand opera was the problem, or rather, the dogs reacting to it. Does the gerund require a possessive? The last example: the dogs reacting to it exemplifies a construction which has long been a bone of contention in English. Some insist that it should be made possessive: the dogs’ reacting to it, and Fowler (1926) argued long and hard that without the possessive marker the construction (which he called the “fused participle”) was “grammatically indefensible”. As with many such issues, it goes back to the eighteenth century, when the form with the possessive was attacked and defended, most notably by Webster (of Webster’s Dictionary), who claimed that it alone was “the genuine English idiom”. Others then and now would argue that both constructions(with andwithout the possessive marker) have their place, because their meaning or emphasis is slightly different. Compare: The dogs reacted to me singing. The dogs reacted to my singing. The first sentence focuses on the fact that I sang, whereas the second seems to imply that it was the way I sang which caused a reaction. Yet that difference intersects with 327 get, got and gotten matters of style. The choice of my makes the sentence rather formal, while the use of me is acceptable in all kinds of writing these days. Still there’s a grammatical point to note: that my or other possessive pronouns are necessary when the gerund is the subject of the sentence, as in My singing alarmed the dogs. The use of accusative me there sounds ungrammatical. But when the gerund follows the verb, either construction can be used. A majority of Australians (over 70%) endorsed the accusative pronoun in such constructions, in an Australian Style survey conducted in 2003. The Comprehensive Grammar of English (1985) and others provide us with very satisfactory grammatical analysis of the two constructions; and Webster’s English Usage (1989) shows the accusative construction has been used by speakers and writers for centuries. The issue turns out to be another of those linguistic fetishes which has generated more heat than light. get, got and gotten Get is a common and useful verb, especially in informal spoken English. It is an easy synonym for many others, such as obtain, receive, fetch, buy, take, arrive, become. Apart from these meanings, it has a number of roles as an auxiliary, both in its present form get, and its past got. Let’s deal with each in turn. 1 Get often works as a substitute for the verb be in passive constructions: I’m getting married in the morning. Compare I shall be married in the morning, which is much more formal in style. Get is also used as a causative verb in: You’re getting your car cleaned for the occasion. I’m getting him to do it. Once again, the alternatives are somewhat formal: You will have your car cleaned for the occasion. I have prevailed on him to do it. As the examples show, get is often used in interactive situations, and is suitable for interactive prose as well as written dialogue. The alternatives are less flexible in style and meaning, and best suited to impersonal and documentary writing. 2 Got also has auxiliary roles, both as the past of get in its passive and causative roles, and in its own right in structures like has/have got to, where it serves as an informal substitute for must or ought to (see further under auxiliaries). The got to construction is so familiar in speech that the words seem to coalesce, and are sometimes written as gotta. But that blended form is used only in casual dialogue: in other genres of writing the construction is always expressed in its full form. 3 Got serves as the past tense of get in all parts of the English-speaking world. It is also the one and only past participle for many in Australia, as well as for the British 328 gh at large. But for Americans and some Australians, there are two past participles: got and gotten, with separate roles. The dividing lines between them seem to be a bit different. According to the Comprehensive Grammar (1985) got is used in American English when obligation or possession are being expressed, as in You’ve got to come. I’ve got a weekender in the mountains. He hasn’t got a chance. But when it’s a matter of achieving or acquiring, gotten is the form commonly used: They had gotten good results by combining the data. She had gotten a new car since we last saw her. Webster’s English Usage (1989) notes also its use to mean “become”, as in gotten angry. This last usage is the one which stood out in an Australian Style survey of 2002. Those Australians who use gotten are especially likely to use it to mean “become”, and very likely to be under the age of 45. By all the evidence above, get/got is a versatile verb, and with its numerous roles it is the staple of daily communication. English databases of printed material show that it occurs much more often in fiction than in nonfiction, though there are ample examples in all 17 genres of the Australian ACE corpus. It is scarcest in the categories of religious, bureaucratic and academic writing, the genres which can least tolerate informality of style. This stylistic point is the one to make to novice writers about get/got: that it is a verb to avoid in writing which aims to be formal—not that it should be rooted out everywhere like a noxious weed. gh This notorious pair of letters represents a bizarre range of sounds in English. At the start of a word, they simply stand for “g”, as in ghost and ghastly. At the end of a word they never represent “g”, and often no consonant at all. The gh has no sound in any of the following: inveigh neigh sleigh weigh high sigh thigh bough plough sough dough furlough though through borough thorough In three other groups of words, gh represents “f”: laugh enough rough tough cough trough Given such bewildering possibilities, it’s surprising how few words ending with gh have alternative spellings. Plow has indeed replaced plough in American English, though not in British or Australian English; and though draft has taken over from 329 ghetto draught in the US, it has some distance to go elsewhere (see further under draft). Thru is still considered rather informal (see through); and donut is only just recognised as a variant of doughnut. Only lite (“having an undersupply of the standard ingredient”) seems to have developed a life of its own, apart from light,as in lite beer, lite yoghurt. ghetto The plural of this Italian loanword was once ghetti, but now the choice is between ghettos and ghettoes. Ghettos is the spelling given priority in Australian dictionaries, and is all that’s needed. Yet ghettoes persists to show that the word has been in English a long time (since the seventeenth century). See further under -o. gibber This string of letters gives Australians two words for the price of one. The first is the noun (or verb) meaning “rapid, unintelligible talk” and pronounced with a “j” sound, which it shares with the rest of the English-speaking world. It is believed to be an “echoic” word, i.e. one which originated as onomatopoeia. (See further under onomatopoeia; and compare barbaric.) The second word, a noun meaning “stone” and pronounced with a “g” sound, is an Aboriginal loanword from the Dharug language once used around Port Jackson. It can refer either to individual stones and boulders, or to a substantial outcrop of rock, as the familiar compounds show: gibber plain “arid, flat land littered with large weathered stones” gibber gunyah “a rock shelter or shallow cave” gibe, gybe or jibe These spellings are shared by three different words: 1 taunt (noun or verb) 2 sudden shift in the setting of a fore-and-aft sail from one side to the other (verb or noun) 3 accord (verb), as in: It didn’t jibe with what I knew of him. The different spellings were used interchangeably in earlier centuries, but in a division of labor established by the Oxford Dictionary, gibe is associated with the meaning “taunt” and gybe with the nautical term—at least in Britain. This distinction is maintained by some Australians. The spelling jibe is applied to the third word “accord”, only recently recognised in dictionaries outside North America, though Oxford Dictionary (1989) offers citations for it going back into the nineteenth century. In Australia, Britain and North America, jibe also serves as an alternative for the word “taunt”, and is preferred by Americans and others for the nautical term. This makes it the most freely used of the three spellings, and if it does service for all three words, the contexts will always clarify the meaning. The nautical term has its own context of use, and the other two words (as verbs) are differentiated by the fact that in the sense “accord” jibe is normally followed by “with”. 330 [...]... groyne These spellings are usually applied to two different words The first is anatomical, used to refer to the groove where thighs join the abdomen, a usage which goes back to about 1400 The architectural use of groin to mean “a curve or edge where two vaults intersect”, dating from the eighteenth century, seems to be a figurative extension of the use in anatomy A groyne is a breakwater designed to reduce... who work close to the clock (such as radio announcers), but is otherwise more loosely related to the beforelunch and after-lunch segments of the day The boundary between afternoon and evening is even more fluid, and is set either by the end of the working day, or the evening meal Note that all three may serve to open or close a conversation, but when used at the end, their overtones are rather detached... with to as an informal auxiliary to express future intention: We’re going to paint the town red So well established is this use of going to for the future, it can combine with go itself as the main verb: They’re going to go to the races Another sign that going to has made it as an auxiliary is the fact that the larger dictionaries list it as a single word: gonna/gunna These assimilated forms are however... (Canadian English Usage (1997)) So writers who wish to target the older distinction will need to use alternatives such as “epicure” and “glutton” for the noun government In Australian English this word may take either a singular or plural verb in agreement, depending on whether the writer is concerned with it as a single institution or with the individuals it comprises: The government is on the point... than in overwhelming their readers with long words Whether they aim to impress or to cover their tracks, what they offer the reader is verbal fog: The departmental reaction to the municipal government submission on recreational facilities was instrumental in discouraging philanthropic contributions towards them Decoded, this means (more or less): The department was unhelpful about the council’s proposal... cataloguing as their second preferences The strength of catalog may owe something to the mail order system—or else to librarians The spellings with -gue are in fact French forms of the Greek words, mostly borrowed into English during the sixteenth and seventeenth century This helps to explain why the -gue spellings are still established in American English, whereas the frenchified spellings of the nineteenth... shall produce the person (in court)”, is the beginning of several writs in English law It represents an important civil liberty, obliging anyone who holds a prisoner in custody to bring him or her to court, and state the reasons for their detention The court then examines the law under which the person is held and decides whether imprisonment is justified or not The process is designed to prevent people... Catholic tradition retains the spelling alleluia in the New Jerusalem Bible (19 85) , and it’s also enshrined in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, the English Hymnal and the New English Bible (1961) The preference for alleluia among established churches thus seems to complement the use of hallelujah within the gospel churches But both are well represented on the pages of the ecumenical Australian Hymnbook... auxiliary the prime function of have is to express the perfect tense, as in: I have waited she has been waiting they had waited (See further under aspect.) Another auxiliary or semi-auxiliary function is to express obligation, as in: They have to come with us They’ve got to come with us (The latter is the more informal of the two constructions See get section 2.) Have also serves as a causative verb and to. .. ensure that can do first aid Whether you put he or she, you seem to imply that teachers are all of the same gender The same problem affects his/her and him On arrival at the hotel, the tourist was expected to hand passport to the manager Here again, the choice of his or her begins to create a gender-specific identikit of the tourist In earlier centuries and before the general concern about sexism . communicating than in overwhelming their readers with long words. Whether they aim to impress or to cover their tracks, what they offer the reader is verbal fog: The departmental reaction to the municipal government. as the main verb: They’re going to go to the races. Another sign that going to has made it as an auxiliary is the fact that the larger dictionaries list it as a single word: gonna/gunna. These. two different words. The first is anatomical, used to refer to the groove where thighs join the abdomen, a usage which goes back to about 1400. The architectural use of groin to mean “a curve or