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#1 2006-08-21 09:43:27

smintheus
Member
Registered: 2006-08-21
Posts: 2

being that...

The usage of “being that…” for “seeing that…” (that is, ‘in as much as’) suddenly struck me about four years ago. I began seeing it frequently in student papers when I took a job at a rather mediocre college, and I gather that it has been in common usage a little bit longer than that. I can’t remember ever having encountered it before 2001, however.

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#2 2006-08-21 17:11:03

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

Re: being that...

As a kid—decades ago—I used this construction in an article in the school paper, and both another student and a teacher pointed it out to me as “non-standard.” I was astonished; I thought it sounded very elegant.

The Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage calls this dialectal, with the American South and Northeast being the main places it’s encountered. But I was a California kid raised by Midwesterners, so it has obviously spread.

And, of course, Shakespeare always turns out to have used any phrase that seems recent: this one appears in Much Ado.

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#3 2006-08-21 21:29:42

jorkel
Eggcornista
Registered: 2006-08-08
Posts: 1456

Re: being that...

If I’m not mistaken, there is a phrase in many wills that begins: “Being of sound mind…” And, if I’m not further mistaken, it’s also just an elliptical way of saying “Being that I am of sound mind…” Granted, the language in a will may be legalese, but that usage of “being that” certainly doesn’t sound like anything other than standard English to me!

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#4 2006-08-21 22:20:21

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

Re: being that...

“Being that” is considered a conjunction, like “because” or “since.”

“Being” in the legal formula you cite is the good old present participle, and it needs to be associated with a pronoun (usu. “I”) in the next clause.

You can test the difference between them. “Because” or “since” will usu. substitute for the conjunction quite gracefully, but they’re awkward when substituted for the participle.

Examples
Being of sound mind and body, I’m giving you everything.

*Because of sound mind and body, I’m giving you everything.

Being that it’s hot today, I’m gonna make lemonade.
Because it’s hot today, I’m gonna make lemonade.

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#5 2006-08-22 22:17:05

smintheus
Member
Registered: 2006-08-21
Posts: 2

Re: being that...

Patschwieterman: Thanks for your comments. It’s not clear to me how exactly you construe the expression, grammatically. IOW, how did it arise? I assumed when I first saw it that it was a simply a mistake for ‘seeing that’, and in every case where I’ve noticed it subsequently, that substitution works.

Do you agree with that? I’d be willing to entertain the opposite theory, that ‘seeing that’ derives from ‘being that’, except that I can make sense grammatically of ‘seeing that’ and not of ‘being that’.

“Seeing that it has begun to rain, (I believe that) we should go inside.”

But in most of the ‘being that’ sentences I’ve seen, there are no ellipses that, when filled out, make grammatical sense. For example, the sentence you gave:

“Being that it’s hot today, I’m gonna make lemonade.”

‘Being’ refers to nothing, has no unexpressed antecedants, and just simply makes no sense grammatically.

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#6 2006-08-22 23:00:29

kdanieli
Member
Registered: 2006-08-22
Posts: 9

Re: being that...

“Being that it’s hot today,...” seems very much like “Given that it’s hot today,...”. I do feel that “Being that” is awkward and not meaningful.

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#7 2006-08-22 23:32:59

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

Re: being that...

Hi.

I’m not a grammarian; I’m just following the authorities. The OED is a little fuzzy on the part of speech for “being that” (though they don’t consider it nonstandard—just dialectal and/or archaic). The Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (MWDEU) doesn’t waffle—they call it a conjunction pure and simple, and repeat that classification a number of times in the article. And I think they’re right. It works just like “because” or “since.” If it’s judged by the standards of a present participle, it’s a really lousy, awkward participle. But that’s because it’s not a participle. Once you put “being” into combination with “that,” the two become a single (composite) conjunction. If I try to break the phrase down into its component parts, it starts looking weird to me, too. But you can do that with lots of things. Take “because,” for eg. Once you realize it’s just the preposition “by” plus the noun “cause,” it starts looking very strange. “I’m making lemonade by cause it’s so hot outside.” That’s nonsense in contemporary English, but by+cause is still the origin of “because.”

Everyone seems to agree that “seeing that” is a conjunction. The OED calls it a “quasi conjunction,” but the MWDEU is once again much bolder and just labels it a straight conjunction. The seeing in “seeing that” does still feel a bit participial to me, but I think that’s by cause we’re much more used to using a verb like “see” as a participle than a verb like “be.” Shakespeare also uses this one—in Julius Caesar.

Both phrases (or phrases closely related to them) appear in the early 15th C, so it’s unlikely that one is a mistake or substitution for the other.

It’s interesting that so many conjunctions in English seem particularly odd when you look at them in an “etymological” light. I don’t know why that is.

I highly recommend getting a copy of the MWDEU if you’re interested in these topics. Some people consider it too permissive, but it is in any case an astonishingly solid piece of scholarship.

Pat

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#8 2006-08-22 23:37:10

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

Re: being that...

Oh, and I should make it clear I’m not advocating the use of “being that” in formal, written prose. I tend to cross it out in student papers. It doesn’t seem so awkward to me, but it’s a lot longer than a simple “since” or “because.” I think it sounds a bit pompous—more or less the effect I was going for as a schoolkid.

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