| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 141
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| fax machine. In such contexts it’s better to use oral or spoken to make your meaning unambiguous. | 1 |
wait on / wait upon
| | For more than 100 years, language critics have grumbled over the use of wait on and wait upon to mean roughly “await” or “wait for,” as in We are still waiting on management to approve the expenditure for new offices. As the critics would have it, wait on should mean only “to serve the needs of someone.” But it’s hard to see why these phrasal verbs should be so restricted, especially when they have such widespread use as synonyms for wait for among educated speakers and writers. So don’t wait on any more advice—go ahead and use them. | 2 |
wake
| | wake, waken /
awake, awaken
| | The pairs wake, waken and awake, awaken have formed a bewildering array since the Middle English period. All four words have similar meanings, though there are some differences in use. Only wake is used in the sense “to be awake,” as in expressions like waking (not wakening) and sleeping, every waking hour. Wake is also more common than waken when used together with up, and awake and awaken never occur in this context: She woke up (rarely wakened up; never awakened up or awoke up). Some writers have suggested that waken should be used only transitively (as in The alarm wakened him) and awaken only intransitively (as in He awakened at dawn), but there is ample literary precedent for usages such as He wakened early and They did not awaken her. In figurative senses awake and awaken are more prevalent: With the governor’s defeat the party awoke to the strength of the opposition to its position on abortion. The scent of the azaleas awakened my memory of his unexpected appearance that afternoon years ago. | 3 |
| woke and
waked
| | Regional American dialects vary in the way that certain verbs form their principal parts. Northern dialects seem to favor forms that change the internal vowel in the verb—hence dove for the past tense of dive and woke for wake: They woke up with a start. Southern dialects, on the other hand, tend to prefer forms that add -ed to form the past tense and the past participle of these same verbs: The children dived into the swimming hole. The baby waked up early. For more on this, see
verbs, principal parts of under Grammar. | 4 |
| More at
dive and
snuck. | 5 |
want for
| | When want meaning “desire” is followed immediately by an infinitive construction, it does not take for: I want you to go (not want for you to go). When want and the infinitive are separated in the sentence, however, for is used: What I want is for you to go. I want very much for you to go. Want in its meaning of “have need, lack” normally takes for: They’ll not want for anything now that they’ve inherited his estate. | 6 |
way
| | Way has long been an intensifying adverb meaning “to a great degree,” as in way off base or way over budget. This usage is both acceptable and common but has an informal ring. | 7 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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