Chester Draws, in a parallel universe

[ifIwerenotanandroid]

Somewhere this week on MN, I've seen someone write about 'the luck of the drawer' - which still makes sense, as if there's a huge chest of many, many drawers & you have to pick one to open, without knowing what's inside any of them.

GBoucher · Today 01:42

'He polished my shoes, he made them shine.' Yes, that is correct grammatically. But 'to shine (shoes)' is a verb in its own right.

Not in my 1967 OED! I've seen it on old American novels, but not English ones. Like "grounds," I have the impression that they are of American origin. Quite a few "Americanisms" are simply old fashioned words, which went out of use in the UK and sound odd to some people (i.e. me ...)

I remember watching a programme, many years ago, which was on this subject. I seem to remember that many Americans obviously came from Eastern Europe, Italy, etc etc and they learned English as a foreign language. As spellings can be so weird, with few hard and fast rules, they made their best guess at some pronunciations. Also, they often tried to use some sort of logical grammar, from their own languages and we ended up with things like "shined."

I'm just waiting for someone to post a link to "shined" being used by Thomas de Vere in a poem of 1492....

If you insist (well, not really, just some OED screenshots) — you're right, shined as we know it is an American usage (3rd image), but it also goes back a long way as a past tense inflection before falling out of use (first two images).

Sorry for my cruddy highlighting; it's tricky on my phone.

This is a hangover from Old English when the past participle of get was gotten. Although we now use got instead of gotten, this just stayed in the original form perhaps because ill-got gains is awkward to say.

JarByTheDoor · Today 03:57

Sorry for my cruddy highlighting; it's tricky on my phone.

Not at all, I'm full of admiration for your work! I have trouble copying bloody links on my phone!

To be fair I have it easier because I'm working with a honking great enormous phone that DP decided to choose for me as a birthday present a couple of years ago, rather than with the kind of compact phone I might've chosen myself and bought with birthday money, as I'd been planning…

It's a very nice thing, but I think he was thinking of him and his presbyopia, not me and my tiny little hands

Mine's quite big, it's a Nokia Something Someting Mark Whatever. I don't have the world's daintiest fingers.

Ah, having peeled the cover off and shaken all the gravel out, I see it's a Nokia 6.1 - it must be getting on for 5 years old. It was cheap.

Mine's a good inch and a bit bigger screen size than the 6.1. The main problem is my abnormally short thumbs which, when holding the phone right-handed and typing with the right thumb, can only reach as far as "f" 😒

Anyway… 😅

What is your phone? Mine's the biggest cheapo I could get at the time. The ruddy sales boy kept trying to tempt me into tiny, fashionable things. He wouldn't accept that I didn't want to pay 800 blimming quid for a credit card sized thing I:

couldn't use
would get lost
would get broken
and I didn't damn well want.

It's a Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro, according to the settings app, but I've no idea what it cost…

Yeah, they always try to sell your something made of sugarglass for a month's salary.

That link is about wood grindings.
We were talking about coffee grounds!

Is this grindings for another OED lookup?

But it is "correct".
It is used in American and other varieties of English (common in Scotland, for example) so you will hear it.
Your original post post seemed to imply it was totally wrong and had never been a word.

Yes, language evolves; in which case it's strange to be so rigid about the "correctness" of a word.
It is prescriptive rigidity about correctness and opposition to variation that would have had us still talking like cavemen.

For all we know, cavemen had the most lyrical, expressive language imaginable, and we'd just need to add a few extra bits of vocab like refrigerator and pantyliner and spam.

Very true, @JarByTheDoor 😃

😂

@Lycanthropology I never implied it had never been a word. As I said about ill-gotten gains, I'm aware it is Old English but it is no longer used in Standard English (aside from in 'ill-gotten gains' which is still in use). This is why I deem it incorrect. The fact that the Americans say gotten doesn't make it correct in the UK (although I had no idea it was standard in Scotland - does this mean in Scottish schools children are taught 'gotten' is correct and 'got' is wrong??), otherwise, we would have to say words like plow and donut are correct too. And once you say those are correct, how far do you go? Should pidgin languages count as Standard English too?

Looks can be this evening, I tell ya.

Michael wave for sale...

Every dictionary I've looked up (Collins, Cambridge, Britannica, etc.) makes it clear that 'gotten' is an American word that is not recognised in the UK (aside from in ill-gotten gains!).

Britannica

Sorry, not sure why there's a random Britannica at the end of the post. It wasn't meant to be some nationalistic slogan or anything!

@SinnerBoy I've never come across any indication that shining shoes is an Americanism. My hard copy dictionary (that I almost never use anymore in favour of online versions) is the New Oxford Dictionary of English, and the definition of shine we are talking about is in there. Americans do use old fashioned English. It's often the case with immigrants. They take the language from their mother country and hold onto it in its original form far longer than in the country it was taken from. I remember reading about this phenomenon but can't remember why it happens.

No it's not 'standard' in Scotland (whose everyday use of language is 'standard' anyway?) but it's common, and it is an old hangover, rather than people getting it wrong or being influenced by the US; it's not an Americanism when it is used in Scotland or Ireland, so is not the same as donut etc.

Your English English dictionaries do contain some Scottish variations, but are pretty good at overlooking others!

@Lycanthropology I take it you are Scottish

Maybe 🙃