A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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mutual animosity means “their animosity for each other” or “the animosity between them,” and a mutual defense treaty is one in which each party agrees to come to the defense of the other. But many people also use mutual to mean “shared in common,” as in The bill serves the mutual interests of management and labor. This usage is perhaps most familiar in the expression our mutual friend, which was widespread even before Charles Dickens used it as the title of a novel. While some language critics object to this usage because it does not include the notion of reciprocity, it appears in the writing of some of our greatest authors—among them Shakespeare, Edmund Burke, George Eliot, and James Joyce—and it continues to be used by well-respected writers today.
1
myriad
Throughout most of its history in English, myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the early 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both uses in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Myriad myriads of lives.” The poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact, both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek. The Greek word murias, from which myriad derives, could be used as either a noun or as an adjective, but the noun murias was used in general prose and in mathematics while the adjective murias was used only in poetry.
2
nauseous / nauseated / nauseating
Roller coasters make me nauseous—or is it nauseated? Some people insist that you should use nauseous only to mean “causing nausea” and that it is incorrect to use it to mean “feeling sick to your stomach.” The Usage Panel tends to support this notion. Seventy-two percent think you should be nauseated by roller coasters rather than made nauseous. But oddly enough the panel does not think nauseous is the best word to mean “causing nausea.” Eighty-eight percent of the panel prefers nauseating in the sentence The children looked a little green from too many candy apples and nauseating (not nauseous) rides. Since there’s plenty of evidence to show that nauseous is widely used to mean “feeling sick,” it appears that people use nauseous mainly in the sense in which it is considered incorrect. In its “correct” sense it is being supplanted by nauseating.
3
no sooner than / no sooner when
Because sooner in no sooner is a comparative adverb like better in no better, the expression should be followed by than, not when: No sooner had she come than the maid knocked. I had no sooner left than she called.
4
number
As a collective noun, number may take either a singular or a plural verb. It takes a singular verb when it is preceded by the definite article the: The number of skilled workers is increasing. It takes a plural verb when preceded by the indefinite article a: A number of the workers have learned new skills. For more on this, see
collective noun under Grammar.
