Next times
Can we agree on a day to meet?
HARRY CHASE THOUGHT his English was pretty good, until he phoned the dryer repairman one Monday.
"He says he'll come between 8 and noon next Thursday," recounted Chase, who lives in Mansfield, in an e-mail. "I wait all Thursday morning; no repairman. I phone him again and he says he meant the following Thursday.
"As one who has spoken English or a reasonable facsimile thereof for 86 years, I wonder: Am I wrong in thinking that next Thursday really means the next Thursday?"
Reader Janice Marnell would say yes. "When I say on Wednesday, 'See you next Friday,' I mean the Friday of the following week," she e-mails. Her friend, however, tells her "that 'next Friday' means the upcoming Friday, and my way is just a Bostonian usage."
The argument even made its way into a "Seinfeld" episode, where Sid, the neighborhood car parker, debates Jerry:
Sid: I'm going down to visit my sister in Virginia next Wednesday, for a week, so I can't park it.
Jerry: This Wednesday?
Sid: No, next Wednesday, week after this Wednesday.
Jerry: But the Wednesday two days from now is the next Wednesday.
Sid: If I meant this Wednesday, I would have said this Wednesday.
Harry and Jerry can claim, at least, that their version came first. In Old English, next was the superlative of nigh - that is, it meant "nearest." Next Wednesday should thus be the nearest in time, not the one a week later.
But some people - not Bostonians, but Scots, according to the Oxford English Dictionary - reasoned that it made more sense to put "next Wednesday" in "next week," even if another Wednesday (this Wednesday) came sooner.
No doubt their intentions were good. But now, "Next Friday may mean 'the soonest Friday after today' or 'the Friday of the coming week,"' says the OED. And "it is not always clear which meaning is intended." That sounds like British understatement; when
There is, in fact, an easy fix available. We could say, as the British do, "Thursday week" to mean "a week from (the upcoming) Thursday." It's a thoroughly respectable form, in use since the Middle Ages by authors both classic (Dickens, Thackeray) and contemporary (Maeve Binchy, Anna Maxted).
But Americans haven't taken to "Thursday week"; apparently we'd rather fight than switch. So if we have to get out the calendar and name the date every time we call the plumber, the baker, or the candlestick maker, we have only our stubborn selves to blame.
. . .
AIN'T TOO PROUD TO BEG: "Isn't 'Please RSVP' a bit redundant?" asked reader Bob Martell recently. "Or perhaps in English, RSVP is now a verb and noun, not translated from its French origins?"
Indeed it is - a verb, a noun, and more! Yes, RSVP stands for repondez, s'il vous plait - please reply - but in English, the abbreviation has been used as a separate word for quite a while.
It's a noun, for instance, in the 1878 book "Sensible Etiquette," by Clara Jessup Moore: "An invitation of this sort is not to be answered unless an RSVP is on the card." (Moore was no fan of RSVP, by the way. She thought that to "remind a lady or gentleman that an invitation should be answered is, to say the least, a faint reproach to their breeding," since all "refined people" know the proper response.)
Google Books also turns up a children's book on heraldry, dated 1886, that uses RSVP as a verb. But it doesn't yet mean "to reply," as it does today, but to mark with the abbreviation: "Last winter, grandma gave a big party, and RSVP'd all the invitations."
In the 1917 novel "A King in Babylon," RSVP is used as an adjective in a dialogue between two young men. "I never had a woman look at me like that [with hatred] before," says one. "No," replies his friend; "you've been used to RSVP eyes and all that."
With RSVP established as a word in its own right, it's no surprise that the "please" it includes no longer hits us in the eye, and we feel the need to add another "please." Other abbreviations suffer the same fate; ATM machine, HIV virus, SAT test are all technically redundant, but often useful - either because your audience may have forgotten an abbreviation's origin, or simply because repetition contributes to clarity.
"Please RSVP" may not even need these excuses: You could credibly argue that it's not redundant at all, but merely emphatic. In an age when, I'm told, people aren't always prompt in answering invitations - even when prepaid cards are supplied - it would be all too understandable if hosts felt they had to beg prospective guests to "please, please respond."
E-mail Jan Freeman at freeman@globe.com. For past columns, go to boston.com/ideas.
