Monday, April 4, 2011

ALOTT5MA SPECIAL BONUS MONDAY GRAMMAR RODEO: I feel like I owe you a legitimate one after Friday's hijinks (and also to verify that the previous two+ months were not merely a set-up for a joke), and it comes by way of Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big To Fail, his inside story of how everyone involved in the Wall Street financial crisis was interrupted from a fabulous vacation at some point or other (and what model of black car each is driven in) (coming next month to HBO), though it does contain at least some detail as to what actually happened and why.

Anyway, at page 264 we see this sentence:
[Fuld] spent ten minutes again imploring Paulson to call Christopher Cox at the SEC to press him to instate a short-selling ban, to announce an investigation -- anything that would give him an opportunity to recover.
Instate. Well, that sounds odd, and my first thought was that this was some kind of wretched back-formation of "reinistate" that someone had made up.  But, apparently, it's real -- or, it was real at some point.

According to Merriam-Webster, instate does predate reinstate, having first been seen in 1603 (and meaning "invest, endow, bestow, confer"), though it is considered obsolete today. The OED dates it to 1613 (Thomas Heywood's Silver Age, "Faire Danaes sonne instated in my throne") and Samuel Pepys's 1667 Diary ("He will enstate the King of Spain in the kingdom of Portugall"), with the term meaning "To put (a person) into a certain state or condition; to place in a certain position; to install, establish. " while also suggesting it's somewhat obsolete.

So, "instate."  Do you use it, will you use it, or should we just let this verb sleep?  There is a poll.\

Poll results: It's not real (60%0, I may try it now (26%), I already use it (13%).

22 comments:

  1. isaac_spaceman10:40 AM

    <span>I think the only reason to use it would be if you had a paragraph where you had used "establish" and "institute" a dozen or so times and just couldn't bear to use them again.</span>

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't know that I would use it (except in the circumstance Isaac notes above), but I also don't think I would find it notable if I were to encounter it in a book. 

    ReplyDelete
  3. Agreed--not a word I'd use, and would strike me as odd if I came across it, but would knew what it means. 

    And TBTF is actually pretty good as first draft narrative history. 

    ReplyDelete
  4. Except to me it was all NY-DC-Omaha centered "this is how the big players dealt with it," and not enough (a) forensic excavation/explanation as to why it happened, (b) discussion of how this all was impacting upon (or pushed forward by) average Americans, or (c) authorial assessment of culpability.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I actually appreciated (c), having read entirely too many pieces of "it's the banks' fault" or "it's dumb homeowners who borrowed too much's fault!"  I thought the book ultimately let you make up your own mind about why things happened, which is much more interesting (and useful as history) than the new polemic from Matt Taibbi.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Paul Tabachneck12:26 PM

    I needed some new words to work with!  I think I'll sneak this one into a song this year.

    ReplyDelete
  7. lisased12:28 PM

    This reminds me of one of my favorite writing exercises of all time, from the New Yorker: http://beebo.org/smackerels/how-i-met-my-wife.html

    ReplyDelete
  8. Part of that, though, is because of Sorkin's role as a continuing chronicler of Wall Street and his need to maintain access to all these figures.  I do want to read *something* with more of a point of view as a follow-up ... after I finish Sarah Vowell's trip through Hawaiian history.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Meghan12:31 PM

    Upon reading this, I absolutely thought that I already use this as a verb.  Then I realized that I actually use institute.  So it doesn't strike me as odd but I don't apparently use it, as much as I'd like to think I do. 

    I also used to swear up and down that I aspirated the t at the end of mat and cat and didn't do the old glottal stop that most native US speakers of English do.  Then I checked myself in the course of a casual conversation and hey, guess what?  Glottal stop.

    Moral of the story?  I like to think I articulate and choose words better than I actually do.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Benner1:01 PM

    "All the Devils Are Here" is the best in that vein, in my opinion.  

    I saw a panel on financial journalism on tv with Sorkin, and he made some comment about how he couldn't name his sources, and Michael Lewis, also on the panel (and who's "The Big Short" is funnier but less comprehensive than the Nocera/McLean book), cracked, "do you want me to?  I read your book."  

    Instate is not the best word he could have used.  

    ReplyDelete
  11. isaac_spaceman1:41 PM

    Just dawned on me that another problem with "instate" is that it looks like "in state," as in "laid out dead." 

    ReplyDelete
  12. MidwestAndrew1:53 PM

    Would it help if it were "enstate?" Then, i don't think it works as the prelude to reinstate.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Meghan2:01 PM

    No, after more consideration, I'm sure that I've heard/read that rules were instated to accomplish whatever.  I'm firmly on board with "It's a word."

    ReplyDelete
  14. christy in nyc2:07 PM

    It sounds totally normal to me, but I can't say for sure if I ever hear it or see it or use it. So I can't answer the poll.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Yeah, I just finished "The War For Late Night," and while most quotes are sourced, at the very end, there's someone who's anonymous but billed basically as "someone important who didn't want to speak on the record" who says (more or less) "The Tonight Show used to matter as a brand, but now, it doesn't."  It certainly read to me as coming from Letterman (who conspiciously is not quoted anywhere else in the book).

    ReplyDelete
  16. Adlai3:14 PM

    "whose"

    ReplyDelete
  17. Adlai3:15 PM

    I read it as "instate" as opposed to "outofstate."

    ReplyDelete
  18. gtv20003:42 PM

    Regardless of whether you like it as a word or not, it is used incorrectly in the cited passage according to the MW definition.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Aimee3:46 PM

    I've absolutely used it as a verb, and have heard it used by others.  If people are using it, can it really be considered obsolete?

    ReplyDelete
  20. After reading this today, I've heard my boss use "instantiate" at least 4 times for similar meaning.  If instate is ruled a sleeping verb, instantiate probably doesn't stand a chance...

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anonymous9:01 PM

    As much as I have enjoyed the grammar rodeos, I'm a bit disappointed that they weren't, in fact, just the set-up for an elaborate April Fool's hoax.  

    ReplyDelete
  22. Jenn.9:15 PM

    I don't know why my computer doesn't like to leave my name.

    ReplyDelete