963. Strunk and White said to omit needless words, but sometimes "redundant" words can serve a meaningful purpose. Plus, we have the story behind larruping food.
963. Strunk and White said to omit needless words, but sometimes "redundant" words can serve a meaningful purpose. Plus, we have the story behind larruping food.
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by Mignon Fogarty
"The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White is one of the most popular usage guides of modern times, and of the book’s pieces of advice, “Omit needless words,” may be the most memorable and repeated maxim. It is an example of its own command — it has no needless words — and it appeals to any teacher whose students pad their ideas with fluff to reach a required word count. Despite its simplicity, however, the maxim leaves us with one open question: What makes a word needless?
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Stick around because after we talk about the times when it's actually OK to be redundant, I'll talk about the oddball word "larruping."
When you're trying to figure out if a word is "needless," one simple test is to ask whether a word adds meaning, and the answer can vary from sentence to sentence. Consider "personally." At first, it seems to be redundant. Don’t the following sentences mean the same thing?
Personally, I want lasagna for dinner.
[and]
I want lasagna for dinner.
Although it’s true that both sentences mean the person wants lasagna, adding "personally" to the beginning acknowledges that other people are involved. With "personally," it sounds like less of a demand, or it can even convey a sense of resentment or superiority:
Personally, I want lasagna for dinner, but you know we always end up having what George wants.
Personally, I never call mom before noon, but Edith seems to think it’s fine.
Would those sentences mean the same things without "personally"? Yes, but the writers would also sound less put-upon and self-righteous without the word "personally."
"Personally" can also emphasize disagreement with an authority, an “I have to do this but I don’t want to” feeling:
Personally, I believe the company should reimburse you for those cocktails you sent to Lady Gaga’s table in Vegas at 3:00 a.m. ― it was clearly a business development opportunity ― but Mr. Montaro disagrees.
Reflexive pronouns such as "myself," "himself," and "herself" can also add emphasis in ways that seem redundant at first glance. Certainly, the actions are the same in these sentences ― but the emphasis is different.
I baked the cake.
[and]
I baked the cake myself.
The first sentence ("I baked the cake") is a simple statement, maybe the answer to a question. Maybe someone asked, "Who baked the cake?" The "myself" in the second sentence ("I baked the cake myself") adds a different feeling, for example, it could convey a sense of accomplishment from a 10-year-old who has baked his first cake or a sense of abandonment from someone who expected to bake the cake with a friend.
A while ago, I was talking with some reporters from a local radio station, and they said they had been debating whether it would be redundant to say that the unemployment rate "remains unchanged" at four percent. "Remains" and "unchanged" convey the same idea. You could say, "The unemployment rate remains at four percent," or "The unemployment rate is unchanged at four percent," and they both mean the same thing, but the reporters had decided it was OK to use both words because together "remains" and "unchanged" added emphasis, which is especially important in an audio program where people may miss a word or two, and I agree. It may be technically redundant, but it doesn’t bother me at all.
Social graces also play an often overlooked role in word choice and can be a justifiable reason to include unnecessary words. "You didn’t get the job," is sufficient to convey your meaning, but adding a “needless” lead-in helps soften the blow: "I’m just writing to let you know that you didn’t get the job." Yes, it includes “unnecessary” words, but it sounds nicer.
In some cases, words are technically redundant, but serve a clarifying purpose.
For example, "chai" means “tea” in Hindi; therefore, "chai tea" technically means “tea tea.” In America, however, the word "tea" calls to mind simple black tea. In our culture, chai is a special kind of tea, and the word "chai" on the menu adds specificity. When chai was first introduced in America, customers probably wouldn’t have known that it was tea if they just saw the word "chai" on the menu, so writing "chai tea" was a wise business choice. Today, now that most people are familiar with chai, you can make more of an argument that the word "tea" is redundant or unnecessary.
Similarly, cider is technically juice pressed from apples, meaning that "apple cider" is redundant, but given that now we can buy blueberry cider, peach cider, and so on, "apple cider" makes it more clear what is in the bottle.
Finally, dialects and regionalisms can also employ redundancy or wordiness, and fiction writers who want their characters to sound authentic embrace these quirks. For example, a character from Newfoundland may say, “Me, I think we should have lasagna,” and a grocer during the Depression may have insisted on being paid with “cash money.” Nonfiction writers should usually avoid those kinds of phrases, but they can make perfect sense for characters in fiction.
by Mignon Fogarty
A few weeks ago, I played a familect story from Melanie in Arizona, and I got so caught up in answering the question about her mom asking her if a boy at school "gave her any house," that I neglected to comment on the other story about the word "laripin" that her friend used to describe a good meal.
Here's a refresher:
"I used to work with a person who had a familect for something that tasted so delicious that was beyond words. The word was "laripin," like that cheesecake was a "laripin." I never knew how to spell it, but I always imagined it being L-A-R-I-P-I-N. So even though my family never adopted the word, I still find myself thinking of it when something is over-the-top delicious."
Melane had said she thought it was a made-up word, and I just assumed she was right. But after the voicemail went live on the podcast, a listener named Walter left a comment saying he had heard the word over the years! And others followed suit. As I looked into it more, I learned that it's regional.
The Oxford English Dictionary has both "larrup" and "larrupping," spelled "L-A-R-R-U-P" and "L-A-R-R-U-P-I-N-G." It's labeled as "dialect" and "colloquial," and was first recorded in the 1820s when it meant to beat, flog, or thrash, as in "Your father'll give you a fine larrupin' if he comes home and there's that cow lost." It's similar to "whopping" or "thumping." Etymologist Anatoly Liberman, who writes for the Oxford University Press blog, says that "larrup" is widely known in Britain.
Interestingly, it then somehow made its way to the U.S. — at least part of the U.S. — where it started to be used the way Melanie's friend uses it: to describe delicious food. The earliest example in the Dictionary of American Regional English, better known as DARE, is from 1905 recorded in northwest Arkansas: "Good. ‘I’ve got something larrupin’ for you.’" DARE has examples from other regions such as California and Colorado, but says it's especially concentrated in Texas, Oklahoma, and the West Midland region. Here's another example from 1942 in which Texas writer George Sessions Perry is explaining the meaning: "A tasty dish is 'larrupin’,' which could have come from the use of the same word meaning a 'beating,' thus developing a connotation of superiority."
It also kept its "beating, thumping, or whopping" meaning too though: one nickname for Lou Gehrig, a famous baseball player from the 1920s and '30s, was "Laruppin' Lou" because of how hard he hit the ball.
Nobody seems to know for sure where "larrup" originally came from. The OED doesn't have an origin, and on his OUP blog, Liberman could only determine that it's related to other l-r complex words such as "slurp," "lurk," and "lurch." It's a bit of an under-the-radar odd duck too in that some dictionaries only have the "beating" meaning and others only have the "exceedingly good food" meaning, but I can tell you that your friend didn't make it up, and when you see something over-the-top delicious and think of the word "larruping," you aren't alone.
Thanks again for the question, Melanie, and thanks to Walter for making sure this one didn't fall through the cracks.
Finally, I have a new familect, and I'm pretty sure this one is original to this family:
"Hi, My name is Alex. I've got an example of a familect. My wife and I will eat, like, chicken and fries from the freezer, and at some point one of us misheard the other one, and when we said, one of us, and if you wanna have chicken and fries for dinner. They heard it as 'You wanna have chicken surprise for dinner?' And ever since then, chicken surprise has been short hand for our quick chicken tenders and fries dinners. My wife tried make fish surprise as well, but I had put my foot down about that one."
Thank you, Alex. "Chicken surprise" sounds much more fun than "chicken and fries," but I have to say, I'm with your wife on "fish surprise" too. Why not call everything with fries a surprise? It sounds more fun.
If you want to share the story of your familect, your family dialect, a word your family and only your family uses, call the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL. It’s in the show notes, and be sure to tell me the story behind your familect because that’s always the best part.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to audio engineer, Nathan Semes; digital operations specialist, Holly Hutchings; director of podcasts, Brannan Goetschius; marketing assistant, Kamryn Lacey; marketing associate Davina Tomlin; and ad operations specialist, Morgan Christianson, who has been a bridesmaid 16 times, which would be a bummer because of all the dresses, but is also amazing because it means you must have so many wonderful friends and family who love you.
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. That's all. Thanks for listening.