Mind your language
-One nod doesn't make a Homer,' said my husband, laughing as if he had said something funny. He was happy in the way that only my mistakes can make him.
I had just shown him a postcard from Mrs O.P. Wood from Herefordshire, who wrote, "Issues around" is indeed "pretty annoying", but so it is to have "around" called a pronoun. I suppose this was an unaccountable slip for which you have been deluged with reproach, and that your admirers must forgive you.' I am not confident that Mrs Wood is among them, nor can [account for having typed pronoun instead of preposition. It might have been pachyderm.
Now the shell-less gastropod of a postman has brought me a letter from Mr Billy Robinson of Southampton, who eggs me on to write about around, which he fears is supplanting round through the evil influence of the Americans and their film Around the World in Eighty Days.
Once in the garden out of earshot of my husband, I began to realise that the trouble was not just one of confusing the preposition (yes, preposition) with the adverb. Some usages were more offensive than others. 'The streets around Trafalgar Square' doesn't sound too bad. 'Pass the hat around' is impossible. To 'sleep around' is obligatory.
My Thelonious Monk CD has 'Round Midnight, with an apostrophe. But there, the difference between American and British English is between around and about. meet you about five o'clock,' I say. 'See you around six,' says Veronica on her mobile.
In some contexts around is not a true preposition. With a phrasal verb such as mess around, play around, the word around is followed by no noun. If you told your child, 'Don't play around the well,' you would be using a preposition and be ruling out even the most decorous games. You might say awkwardly, 'Don't play around around the well,' using both the phrasal verb and a preposition.
For ammunition against the American neologisers, note that around is not found in Shakespeare or the King James Bible. But you will find that Jane Austen used around within the prohibited degrees: 'Emma was beginning to think how she might draw back a little more, when they both looked around, and she was obliged to join them.' (Chapter 10) So if the wicked around has been around for around 200 years, we'll have to get round to getting our heads round it.
Dot Wordsworth
Previous page
