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May 29, 2007

More Language Followup

A regular reader writes in about my earlier entry about infer and imply:

On www.m-w.com (the site from which I proudly receive my Word of the Day, as a National Spelling bee alumnus), infer is, in one of its definitions, apparently synonymous with imply. I, just now, had to stifle a seriously nerdy desire to use "imply" functionally in that last sentence, creating a play on words. I thought I should make that known.
Main Entry:

Pronunciation:
\in-ˈfər\
Function:
verb
transitive verb
1: to derive as a conclusion from facts or premises <we see smoke and infer fire — L. A. White> — compare imply
2: guess, surmise <your letter…allows me to infer that you are as well as ever — O. W. Holmes died 1935>
3 a: to involve as a normal outcome of thought b: to point out : indicate <this doth infer the zeal I had to see him — Shakespeare> <another survey…infers that two-thirds of all present computer installations are not paying for themselves — H. R. Chellman>
4: suggest, hint <are you inferring I'm incompetent?>

Imply and suggest are listed as synonyms of one another in the thesaurus. Does this mean that infer CAN, actually, be synonymous with imply? I really don't think the example question is asking "are you assuming/gathering/surmising I'm incompetent?" I might be missing something, and I'm not saying that at all sarcastically or smugly. I really do feel like a presumptuous little shit to challenge it at all. Is it also possible that the good people at Merriam Webster feel the need to give definition 4 of infer because so much of the population misuses it?

Definition 4 certain says that a possible definition of "infer" can be "imply." But this is wrong! My correspondent is correct in inferring that Merriam Webster placed that definition there because it is so often misused. That's what you have to watch out for with dictionaries-- they are not necessarily prescriptive texts authoritatively explaining how language should be used. To a large degree, dictionaries are descriptive, documenting the various ways in which words are used. Merriam Webster, however, is awesome in that it not only provides definitions in their online dictionary, but it has extensive notes on the infer vs. imply issue:

Sir Thomas More is the first writer known to have used both infer and imply in their approved senses (1528). He is also the first to have used infer in a sense close in meaning to imply (1533). Both of these uses of infer coexisted without comment until some time around the end of World War I. Since then, senses 3 and 4 of infer have been frequently condemned as an undesirable blurring of a useful distinction. The actual blurring has been done by the commentators. Sense 3, descended from More's use of 1533, does not occur with a personal subject. When objections arose, they were to a use with a personal subject (now sense 4). Since dictionaries did not recognize this use specifically, the objectors assumed that sense 3 was the one they found illogical, even though it had been in respectable use for four centuries. The actual usage condemned was a spoken one never used in logical discourse. At present sense 4 is found in print chiefly in letters to the editor and other informal prose, not in serious intellectual writing. The controversy over sense 4 has apparently reduced the frequency of use of sense 3.
It sounds like there that definition #3 is consistent with infer being a close synonym of surmise-- impersonal subjects (such as data) deduce or conclude things, however, over time, people took this to mean that personal subjects could indicate/imply something. One might almost be ready to forgive someone who made this mistake if they saw definition #3 of infer being used on a regular basis, but in fact, most people just seem to use "infer" as a synonym to "imply" if they're making a lame attempt at sounding intellectual (such as in the above-mention example of a letter to the editor). This was, I should note, the one of the first "SAT words" that we had beaten into our skulls to remember.

Posted by Dean at May 29, 2007 8:12 AM

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