LawProse Lessons

So spelled. *"Stupify" is a fairly common misspelling — e.g.: o “Insurance agents will stupify [read ‘stupefy’] their clients with [obscure] notations.” James W. Johnson, Logic and Rhetoric 197 (1962). o “Drugs like heroin and cocaine typically stupify [read ‘stupefy’] and immobilize the user.” Richard Morin, “New Facts and Hot Stats from the Social Sciences,” […]

“Stultify” formerly meant “to attempt to prove mental incapacity.” By modest extension, it came to mean either “to make or cause to appear foolish” or “to put in a stupor.” E.g.: “Rote liturgy can stultify as well as edify.” Daniel B. Clendenin, “Why I’m Not Orthodox,” Christianity Today, 6 Jan. 1997, at 32. Then, by

So inflected. The form *"striked" is erroneous — e.g.: o “The No. 8 Hillbillies striked [read ‘struck’] next when Jack McDaniels returned an interception 97 yards to knot the score at 7.” “N. Marion Breezes over Huntington,” Charleston Gaz., 22 Nov. 1997, at B4. o “As recently as the late Sixties, British post-war race relations

So inflected. The past participle “stridden” (attested in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1576 to 1970), as well as its variant form “strode” (attested from 1817 to 1963), rarely appears today. Another past-participial form, *”strid,” was current before 1800, but it is now obsolete. The form “strode” can be either the simple past or the

Though *”stricken” often appears as a past participle, grammatical authorities have long considered it inferior to “struck.” It’s archaic except when used as an adjective {a stricken community}. The past-participial use is ill-advised — e.g.: “A noncompete agreement that bans a person from ever setting up a competing company in the same geographical location will

Language-Change Index. The third edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage reflects several new practices. Invariably inferior forms, for example, are now marked with asterisks preceding the term or phrase, a marking common in linguistics. The most interesting new feature is the Language-Change Index. Its purpose is to measure how widely accepted various linguistic innovations have

stratum. The plural is “strata” — which should not be used as a singular but sometimes is. E.g.: “By contrast with the atmosphere of, say, Sinclair Lewis’s ‘Main Street,’ in which an afternoon call or the purchase of a shirtwaist might occasion endless talk among every strata [read ‘stratum’] of a community, minding our own

The verb is inflected “strew” / “strewed” / “strewn.” “Strewed” is sometimes misused as a past-participial form — e.g.: o “Cars were strewed [read ‘strewn’] haphazardly in parking lots.” David Montgomery, “Flood Waters Leave Widespread Ruin in Their Wake,” Wash. Post, 23 Jan. 1996, at A1. o “It’s been 13 years since her [Georgia O’Keeffe’s]

“Straitlaced” (= rigidly narrow in moral matters; prudish) referred originally, in the 16th century, to a tightly laced corset — “strait” meaning “narrow” or “closely fitting.” Over time, writers have forgotten the etymology (or they never learned it in the first place) and have confused “strait” with “straight.” Hence the erroneous form *”straightlaced” — e.g.:

straitjacket. The "strait" in this word means "close-fitting." *"Straightjacket" is a common but undesirable variant for "straitjacket" — e.g.: "Teachers of the subject assigned editorials by rhetorical types until it was realized that such straightjacketing [read ‘straitjacketing’] of students was destructive of talent, not a developer of it." Curtis D. MacDougall, Principles of Editorial Writing

straighten; straiten. These two verbs have different meanings. "Straighten" = to make or become straight. "Straiten" = (1) to make narrow, confine; or (2) to put into distress, esp. financial hardship. Because "straiten" is the rarer word, it is sometimes wrongly displaced by "straighten" — e.g.: o "Brookes may pride itself on a different sort

Miscellaneous Entries. stoic, adj.; stoical. Neither form is rare enough to be called a needless variant. But H.W. Fowler rightly observed that “stoical” appears more often as a predicate adjective {his behavior was stoical}, while “stoic” is better used attributively {stoic indifference} (Modern English Usage 1st ed. at 565). Unless specifically referring to the ancient

stomping ground; stamping ground. The first outnumbers the second by a 3-to-1 ratio in modern print sources. When the first edition of this book appeared in 1998, only one major American dictionary listed "stomping ground." Now almost all dictionaries have it, and about half give it priority over "stamping ground." It's perfectly idiomatic to say

stink / stank / stunk. So inflected. *Stinked is a dialectal past tense and past participle. "Stunk" often appears erroneously as a simple-past form, especially in figurative uses — e.g.: o "When I coached, the calls stunk [read 'stank'] then and the calls stink now." Howard Manly, "Patriots, Ch. 4 Winners," Boston Globe, 8 Dec.

stimulus. The plural is "stimuli." This word has not traditionally made a native-English plural, but a few writers have nevertheless experimented with *"stimuluses" — e.g.: o "The octopus is meant not to symbolize industry or productivity, but as an example of the kind of visual stimuluses [read 'stimuli'] that America is producing." Robert W. Duffy,