Implied Inferences

If I said, "When Ross wiggles his ears, a stiff breeze seems to come up," and you said, "Are you inferring that Ross has big ears?", would it hurt if I laughed in your face?

No, dear reader, I wouldn't (a) laugh in your face, nor (b) use the word infer when I mean imply.

When I imply something, I suggest it without actually stating it, a la joking about Ross's wiggled ears and the stiff breezes that follow. When you hear me make such a heartless yet accurate remark (apologies to all the small-eared Rosses out there, who aren't reading this blog anyway, so, on second thought, who cares?), and you believe that what I've said means that Ross has big ears, you infer the big-earedness of Ross. Synonyms for infer are deduce and conclude, but not imply.

In other words, if I make Statement A and it suggests Fact B, I'm implying Fact B. If you hear me make Statement A and it sounds suspiciously like I'm making a case for Fact B, you're inferring Fact B.

Yes, there are those who say that infer has become so widely used as a synonym for imply that we must accede to the advances of such rampant Philistinism. To that I say, why get rid of a perfectly good and useful distinction between imply and infer when it serves us so well? Why? Why? Because there's television? Because elected officials speak to us as if we were third graders? Because we like being dumb?

If I took that last sentence out of the preceding paragraph, could you have inferred my meaning from the two sentences that it followed?

Whom Do You Trust?

Back in the days of yore, and even before yore, there was a game show hosted by a young upstart named Johnny Carson. Johnny went on to The Tonight Show immortality and, fortunately, left behind a phrase that drove English teachers crazy. The name of the game show was Who Do You Trust, and the use of "who" in that sentence is wro-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng! Let's talk about why that's so, shall we?

Who is used as the subject of a sentence. The subject of a sentence, as we all know, is the noun or pronoun that performs whatever action takes place. Who cut the cheese? <--- That's correct, because cut is the verb, and who is doing the cutting. Okay, this is starting to sound like an Abbott & Costello routine with flatulence, so let's move on.

Whom is used as the direct object of a sentence. The direct object of a sentence is also a noun or pronoun, but it is the object on which, or to which, the action is being directed. In our malodorous example above, cheese is the direct object, because, if we note that the verb is cut, we may ask, "what or who is being cut?" And the answer, of course, is the cheese.

Whew! Let's stop all the cheese cutting and talk about the reasons why, in The Curmudgeonly Writer's completely biased opinion, who and whom get mixed up.

Who and whom are usually involved in a sentence that's in the form of a question, right? We don't write, "whom do you trust." (i.e., with a period). We write, "whom do you trust?" Right? And, as we are all subliminally aware, a question usually inverts the order in which the subject and direct object appear in the sentence.

What's the action taking place, i.e., the verb? Trust. And who or what is doing the trusting? You. Hey, you must be the subject of the sentence! Put as a declarative statement, the sentence reads, You (do) trust whom. (We stick those "dids" and "dos" in questions, and take them out in declarations, 'cause we're English speakers and we like to unnecessarily complicate things, y'know? But I digress, parenthetically). Soooo, whom is the direct object, because it's the person, place, or thing that's being trusted.

Whom is also used as the object of a preposition (do you see a pattern? Whom...object...whom...object...ohhhmmmm). The classic Hemingway title, For Whom the Bell Tolls (taken from a classic Donne poem, of course, but you knew that, didn't you?) illustrates the use of a preposition (for) and the object of the preposition (whom). If Ernest had called his book For Who the Bell Tolls, one might have wished he'd wielded his shotgun much earlier in life, mightn't one?

If you end a sentence with a preposition (a naughty no-no among purists, but we'll let our hair down just this once), you can get all screwed up with who and whom, because you separate the preposition from its object, and you might be tempted to say, for example, Who did you give the book to?

Which would be--you guessed it---wro-o-o-o-o-o-ng!

Because to is the preposition, and its object should be whom, not who: To whom did you give the book? Or, Whom did you give the book to?

I'll complicate things just a bit further, and then leave you alone. The verbs is, are, was, and were aren't action verbs. I usually call them "verbs of being," because that's what my fourth grade teacher called them, but who cares? The point is this:

Verbs of being don't take direct objects!

Ack! So in the sentence, Herbert is my teacher, what's the word teacher doing? It's describing or renaming Herbert. The five dollar name for the word teacher in that sentence is predicate nominative. That just means that Herbert and teacher refer to the same person (or place, or thing, as the case may be). So if you mumbled, "Herbert is mfpmffmmfmm," I would correctly ask, "Herbert is who?" If I asked, "Herbert is whom?," you could justifiably put on a wry grin and chide me gently for using whom incorrectly, or you could reveal your true colors and say, "You blithering idiot! Don't you know anything? Whom isn't a predicate nominative, it's a direct object or the object of a preposition!"

Trust me.