Dr. Grammarfuss on Graduation
 

All my life I heard that one "graduated from high school", college, etc.

Now I hear radio announcers saying one "graduated high school" , and this construction is even creeping into the press. Is this simple laziness, or some new edict from the grammar police?

How is this being said where you live? Just curious.

Long time no see, D. In Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and S Cal, where I've lived, it's FROM.The Brits often leave out connectives we favor.

NO, Ralph, no. We hear it, too, but we are not solely to blame. The pedants among us regard this as an insidious thing which we believe is seeping across from your side of the Atlantic. A perceived evil is always another's fault.

It began with people being "diagnosed with" the conditions that had hitherto been the subject of diagnosis. Now people "protest" things rather than protesting againt them, and the verb has become confused with the noun as the stressed syllable no longer knows where to lay its head.

We "medal" in sporting contests rather than "win medals" and things are now "different to" in daily speech here, while the sheer "fromness" of the concept lies weeping in the gutter. The US "than" seems to me a better way to go here.

My point, Ralph, is that we are in danger of starting another Jaguar catfight, when our two great nations could combine in the pursuit of excellence. Together, we stand to gain a glittering prize; divided, we medal.
.

Fine, fine. Take "Dr. Grammarfuss" from me.

At least I still have my colon.

x
Dear Dr. Grammarfuss,

Drank or drunk? Give me a straight answer.
x

It's Drink Drink (drink, drink, drink) Drunk

I've always used, "drunk, drunker, shit-faced".

In the old days, drunk.

Now, due to my meds, if have any alcohol I'm looking at the dirt nap.

Drink? (thank you)
I drink (glug glug)
I drank (yes, I did, didn't I...)
I have drunk (far more than is good for me)
I am drunk (forgive me)

Hey Ann,

I enjoyed our evening too.

:D

Indeed, Sir. I sank happily with the Titanic.

x
Thank you Drs. Grammarfusses.

(I should've asked Jeeves) :::)))
xx
x

All rules of grammar aside, "drank tank" has a nicer ring to it than "drunk tank"...though I'd accept "drunk trunk" as a reasonable compromise, since it's not actually a "tank" to begin with anyhow...

Victim of a downward spiral of alcoholism, the distinguished professor finally graduated from think tank to drunk tank.

In future, when I am adjacent any school I graduated (there are many), I will thank my Latin teacher for her frown on trochaic translations of Caesar’s fave word: “harass,” and mentally toast her in the Happy Isles above where she roots for her students who cracked up when reading her wallboard newspaper clipping about current “native speakers of classical Latin” who omit needless words. Nas drovia! (That’s Polish, just for irrelevant variety.)

I don't see any problem with a transitive usage. "From" is naturally implied; no one is going to imagine otherwise, as we never speak of people as graduating to/into school.

Broadening the way the word can be used took it beyond only meaning "to confer a degree upon" in English to begin with.

x
I'm adjacent Allen on this one.
x

Na zdrowie Allen!

Sorry, Jan! I don’t have the appropriate bottle in front of me to read from. Auditory memory isn’t typographically perfect. Thank you for bringing me the correct foam. Na zdrowie!

Glasses are being chinked and waggled all over the shop, toasts scraped and buttered, but to what are we drinking? To the demise of the old Doctor or to the emergence of the new? Has he been superseded or regenerated? Who knows.

Agreed, Douglas. Grammar commenters judge the transitive usage illiterate. See, e.g, https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/ed...graduated-from
Arguing from experience, I first heard "graduated high school" in New Jersey.

I think that there has been an identity theft of the Grammarfuss brand. I don't approve of those. This particular thread has it's own intrinsic interest, and I posted despite major misgivings. Whether one loved the proper Grammarfuss's search for niceties of nuance or not, the proper Grammarfuss has shown commendable restraint in watching (no doubt goggle-eyed) the proceedings. He deserves a kudo with umami, or maybe a kudo and a half. Or maybe, we others should join with him in a collective of Grammarfussters, just so long as he is in the loop. What say he?

Not a very intelligent way to try to make a case here. This person doesn't seem to understand that transitive usages are fully capable of having more than one meaning and that a meaning can imply "from". Narrowmindedness and (often selectively) short attention spans are more of a problem than words developing broader usages.

We do the same thing with the verb depart:

He departed from the city

He departed the city.

Kevin, that's because people people are using bigger words where little ones could better be. The words "departed" and "left" are not synonymous, but in your example the simple word has been superseded by the more "refined" one, which has lost its preposition in the process.

Allen, I refer you to posts #4 and #20. You are not alone.

x
Ann: "Glasses are being chinked and waggled all over the shop, toasts scraped and buttered, but to what are we drinking? To the demise of the old Doctor or to the emergence of the new? Has he been superseded or regenerated? Who knows."

Oh me oh my. Chinked for clinked and toast for drink. Long live regeneration! Let's get to the top of this, Ms. I'll sup a side of Ann and a dollop of Allen and save some room for a piece of mind. The graduation goes on and on and on and on.
x

Thank you, Ann. It’s good to ventilate in unison with colleagues who wear seven-league boots. At university, I had a close friend that had a little maths in the wheelhouse, who studied a paper-and-pencil psychological sentence-completion test of “ego development” — as it was assessed by sophisticated, trained evaluators — and found that the judged levels of “ego development” correlated stinkingly well with the logarithm of the written syllable-count of the answers — better than with word count or even letter count. Gosh, that's actually pretty neat!

Obviously, it was not a Freudian ego that was being charted, but the windbag ego that swells with wisdom. It’s just that everybody's upping their personal brand by padding with longer phrases in the climb for status. High “ego development”, thesaurus-rich, sentences like the first two sentences of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” were privileged, low “ego development” efforts like poor Aram Saroyan’s “lighght" were dealt disrespect. Haiku might fall in some middle bin. So people want a top kudos evaluation for “departed from” instead of the monosyllabic “fled.” Golly.

Hey, guys - and particularly Douglas Brown - Dr. Grammarfuss was introduced to the Sphere by Mike Juster in 2012, and since then our history shows 16 Dr. Grammarfuss threads (sometimes Mister Grammarfuss) - all started by Mike, and now one started by Douglas Brown.

I checked to see whether Grammarfuss was a common expression, and it isn't. My impression is that Mike coined it. Why don't we leave it with Mike, Douglas, ignore Mike's generous offer in Post #4, and find yourself another word. Alternately, Mike could license the use of the word to you.

Re Post number 4: https://sonnet-40-take-all-my-loves-my-love-yea-take-them-all.

I'm singing the music from your page, Cantor, but there's also the public multiple personality "Jethro Tull" option, where any Spherean could become a Grammarfuss.

Maybe Douglas' initial post is less a usurpation than a humble petition for advice from the veritable Grammarfuss absconditus.

Bill,

Your link in post 21 is much appreciated. I first heard "graduated college" on a Bangor, Maine, radio station about 2 years ago. Now it is creeping into the newspapers.

Maybe Gresham's Law applies to grammar as well as money.


Michael,

If I have stepped on Mike Juster's toes, I sincerely and humbly apologize. "Dr. Grammarfuss" has a nice ring to it, like some character out of a Dr. Seuss book.