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ado » to do

Chiefly in:   much to do about nothing , without further to do

Variant(s):  to-do

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • “It is much to do about nothing because I’m sure it involved human error.” (link)
  • “Much To-Do About Nothing. Why the city’s homeless plan is far from “ambitious.” by Doron Taussig.” (link)
  • “So without further to do lets see what’s new in PHP 5.” (link)
  • “Suddenly, Marc Andreessen appeared on WWW-talk and, without further to-do, introduced an idea for the IMG tag by the Mosaic team.” (link)

First pointed out to me by Thomas Grano, who was searching for occurrences of “much” as a mass determiner and found “much to do about nothing” in his data .

The “much to do about nothing” version is very common indeed: ca. 33,800 raw Google webhits on 13 April 2006; under a thousand for the “without further to do” version. Well, “ado” is rare in modern English except in these two fixed expressions, and “to-do” ‘commotion, fuss’ (which has an etymology parallel to “ado”) fits the overall meaning of both “much ado about nothing” and “without further ado”.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2006/05/02 |

foreword » forward

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • “WritersDigest.com - The home of Writer’s Digest Magazine … Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life … edited by Barnaby Conrad with a forward by Monte Schulz” (link)
  • “Berkeley: The New Student Revolt, Book’s Forward by Hal Draper from the Free Speech Movement Archives Web site.” (link)
  • “Or, as the author says so eloquently in the forward to the book, …” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Carl Hart, 26 February 2005 (link)
  • Johannes Fabian (p.c., 17 April 2006)

The first cite is the one given by Hart; it’s from the Writer’s Digest website, where “forward” seems to be used pretty consistently. Fabian noticed an occurrence in the New York Times (not given here).

The analysis of “foreword” is probably opaque to most modern speakers, so there is a real temptation to treat occurrences of it as occurrences of its homophone “forward”. After all, a foreword comes forward of, in front of, the body of the book.

[Added 14 April 2009: this one seems to be very common. Using data unearthed by Eugene Volokh, Victor Steinbok calculates that 9% of the law review articles between 2000 and 2009 that have a foreword list it as “forward”.]

| 6 comments | link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2006/05/02 |

track » tract

Classification: English – final d/t-deletion

Spotted in the wild:

  • “What software do you guys use to keep tract of the many different programs you all are in? I mean as far as the dividends and spends go and…” (link)
  • “Tenure Tract Associate/Full Professor, Genetics Specialty. School of Nursing. Clemson University invites applications for the position of…” (link)
  • “Other options include recessed or tract lighting above buffets or breakfronts.” (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

  • Wade Hassler (link)
  • David Bowie (ADS-L, 2 May 2006)

Hassler’s comment (of 25 February 2005) in the database cited “keep tract of”. Bowie reported: ” I just got final projects in from the students in my graduate class, and one of them consistently writes about ‘tracts’ within the English major in her introduction,” and added that “‘tracts’ makes sense, if one thinks of the definition of something relatively small and separate from other tracts in the area.” Following up on Bowie, Larry Horn cited “tenure tract” (seconded by Beverly Flanigan, who noted that this one had even been used by members of her department) and “tract lighting” (lighting appropriate for tract houses, presumably).

The opposite reshaping, “tract” >> “track” is already in the database, here.

| Comments Off link | entered by Arnold Zwicky, 2006/05/02 |
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