Grammar Hammer

The answer is four years and four months. What is, the time to stitch the afghan? But that's like stitch three blocks, put it down for 18 months, then work my fingers to the bone to finish it four months after my mother's 60th birthday. If you go back through some of my earlier posts, I bored myself senseless writing about stitching the afghan. 

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Word. I had taken down the blurry number and screwy letter word verification but 1) it made no difference in the number of people who commented and 2) it increased the gibberish spam-bot messages in my email. I'm just not willing to take this for the team. Verification is going back up. You should have taken advantage while it was down.

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You know how every once in a while I go off the deep-end and give you a grammar lesson? Well, today is one of those days.


It's not borrow, it's lend.

I've seen these two confused twice in two days on two different blogs of native English speakers. (I try not to judge nonnative speakers who are writing in a foreign tongue. God knows you'd be laughing your head off if I tried to write this in French!) I remember a while back Coral from South Africa said that it drove her nuts, and I thought, "I have never heard that; it must be a South African thing." (Because there are "things" that are national idiosyncrasies in English. Like in the UK, they say "orientate" while in America we like "orient." Some Americans (idiots, usually) do use the former, but the latter is preferred. (It's the kind of backformation that makes my head explode! Although I will let it slide if you are using it in reference to orienteering. That's just the kind of generous I am.)

"She borrowed me the pattern."
No she didn't. You borrowed it from her. She lent it to you.

If you have the thing, you lend it: "to grant use of (a thing) on condition it will be returned." I'll lend you my magnifier!
If you don't have the thing, you borrow it: "to take or obtain with the promise to return the same or an equivalent." (You can't return the same cup of sugar if you use it, therefore equivalent.) Could I borrow that pattern?


I guess what is confusing is that in each case there's a thing that someone wants and will get on a temporary basis. But they're such different words. I don't get how that gets screwed up.


So let's iterate the grammar lessons we've accumulated thus far on the blog:

• Should have = should've; never (NEVER!) should of. (Same for would, could, and must.)
• Lose is to not win. Loose is not tight. This is true even though lose rhymes with choose. Got it?
• Definitely is spelled D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y . There's no "A" in definitely; just like there's no I in team.
• it's = it is. If a thing possesses something, use "its."
• Two words: after all; each other; in fact; every day (but only when you mean each day); thank you (unless it's an adjective, as in thankyou note. But that's British; Americans write thank-you note.)

And just to remind you it's not all schoolmarm finger-wagging around here, you should (re)read this.