Bitter edge

Should we lay off "on the cusp"?

The news last week brought a cornucopia of cusps, with Michael Phelps "on the cusp of history," China "on the cusp of a new golden age," and Madonna on the cusp - or not! - of adopting another child.

Amid all that cuspiness, I was perplexed to learn from David Devore - American-born but long resident in England - that this use of cusp to mean "edge" or "brink" was not universally acceptable. American reporters "have been using 'cusp' as if it meant 'brink': It doesn't," e-mailed Devore. "Now British writers are aping this habit. Can you please tell your fellow journalists to cut it out?"

I don't think I can, actually, even if I wanted to, because my Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate tells me that cusp means (among many other things) "turning point," as well as "edge" and "verge"; its example is "on the verge of stardom." And that's not just American sloppiness: The Concise Oxford English Dictionary also OK's the sense "a point of transition," as in "the cusp of adulthood."

So what could be wrong with the usage? Googling a bit, I found the rationale laid out by David Marsh, editor of the Guardian's style guide, in a rather despairing article about mistakes that newspaper keeps repeating. "On the cusp" was one of the spotlighted sins.

But metaphorical "on the cusp" is not simply banned - no, that would be too simple. Only the temporal sense is off limits; it's fine - "elegant," even - to use "on the cusp" to mean a conceptual border ("on the cusp of classicism and romanticism").

Guardian writers have been getting it wrong in droves, says Marsh. And I say, no wonder, when you make such a microscopic distinction betweeen two equally plausible uses of a word.

Maybe the astrological cusp did seem more like a location when the word arrived in English, in the 16th century, meaning the entrance to an astrological house. (The word's other senses - mathematical, anatomical, dental, geometrical, architectural - arrived later.)

But since the rise of pop astrology in the 20th century, the cusp most familiar to readers of English-language newspapers is the border between two sun signs: If you're born on the cusp of Cancer and Leo, say, you can double your astrological pleasure by appropriating two personality profiles and two forecasts.

(And since we're discussing international influences, let us note that newspaper astrology was born in England, when the Sunday Express commissioned an astrological chart for the newborn princess, Margaret, in August 1930. The Boston Record soon hitched its wagon to the stars, and later in the decade, the astrology column we know today - with predictions based on sun signs - settled in for its long run on both sides of the Atlantic.)

Now it's true that in a star chart, "on the cusp" is a location, but in real life, it's also a temporal designation. The planets are always in motion, which is why a prospective Leo, dawdling on his natal day, may find himself born a Virgo. As the Winnipeg Free Press noted on Aug. 22, 1956, "You born today possess traits from both Leo and Virgo since you were born on the Cusp, or change of Signs." "Change" - it's a process, not just a place.

This temporal use of "on the cusp" hardly seems like a daring extension of the original sense. Robert Heinlein found it natural enough in 1961, when he adopted it for his science-fiction blockbuster "Stranger in a Strange Land," using cusp to mean a crucial decision point in life's course.

The temporal sense of cusp didn't really take off, a Nexis search suggests, till the early 1980s, and this time American journalists were indeed a couple of strides ahead of the Brits. Still, in a quarter-century of cusps, I've never heard an objection to either metaphorical use. The only discussion of "on the cusp" I've turned up comes from William Safire, whose references to it provide a useful mini-history:

In 1982, Safire used the expression himself, in a political column, referring to the "cusp of the Haig-Shultz transition."

In 1989, Safire gave "on the cusp" a close look in his syndicated "On Language" column, treating it as a vogue expression. His citations included "on the cusp of 50," "on the cusp of stardom," and Dan Rather's declaration, on CBS News, that Hungary was a nation "on the cusp of freedom and democracy."

In a 1994 language column, he claimed that "on the cusp" had displaced "cutting edge" on trendy tongues. Then, in 2002, he joked in passing that cusp had lost its luster ("whatever happened to the cusp?")

In fact, "on the cusp" doesn't seem to have peaked in popularity. But if using it is a language crime, the statute of limitations ran out a long time ago.

E-mail Jan Freeman at mailtheword@gmail.com. For past columns, go to boston.com/ideas; visit the Word blog at boston.com/ideas/theword.