Oh, I love Thanksgiving! It’s such a silly holiday, where we kid ourselves that we’re counting our blessings when we’re really counting how many plates of food we can devour. It’s a day that proclaims that it’s awesome to get along with one another and to trust each other and to share, when the real message of the First Thanksgiving is that doing those things will only result in your land, livelihood, and lives being taken away from you. Wait, that’s not a good holiday at all! But I get to pardon my gluttony for one day, so it’s all right, I guess.
Anyway, let me tell you a little about my upcoming Thanksgiving dinner. Suppose I confessed to you that I anticipate that the overall quality of the dinner will be high, despite the fact that I am in charge of preparing a not-insubstantial portion of the meal. Would I be correct in my confession? Specifically, I’m wondering if I’m justified in my use of the word anticipate, which I’ve used rather like expect.
To hear prescriptivists tell it, I wouldn’t be. They say that anticipate can be used only when the subject has prepared for the expected event. For instance, Fowler’s Modern English Usage (2nd edition, 1965) insists that:
“The use of anticipate as a synonym for expect, though very common, is a slipshod extension. The element of forestall present in anticipate ought to have been preserved and is still respected by careful writers.”
Ambrose Bierce similarly asserts in Write It Right (1909, but I’m using Jan Freeman’s 2009 edition):
“To anticipate is to act on an expectation in a way to promote or forestall the event expected.”
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage finds this claim first made in 1881 by Alfred Ayers, who was something of a giant in the world of 19th century grammaticasters. Ayers justified his claim through Latin etymology, which is never a valid argument. And now a bunch of people parrot it.
Well, are they right and I wrong? Am I right and they wrong? Well, in the cheerful spirit of the forthcoming holiday, let’s say we’re both right. Some of the definitions of anticipate do have a substantial preparatory component. Among these are (I’m paraphrasing the OED’s definitions here) to spend income in advance, to deal with before another actor has a chance to, to forestall, to observe in advance of the due date, to cause to happen earlier, and to take into consideration before the appropriate time.
Now, most of these are fairly uncommon usages for anticipate in contemporary English. I’d wager that few people would now say “I’ve anticipated my wages after taking out the payday loan,” using the “spend income in advance” definition. Same with “I anticipated the fall of the Jenga tower by bumping into it,” using the “cause to happen earlier” meaning.* Of the preparatory definitions listed above, the two I see most commonly are “to forestall” and “to take into advance consideration”:
(1) I played with one new player who asked what dice to roll every time he was instructed to roll for initiative. After the fourteenth time, I anticipated his question and handed him a 20-sided die when combat started.
(2) He anticipated the question “What was the last movie you saw?” but not, “What was the most recent favorite movie you saw?” This interviewee was stumped.
This last definition of anticipate is already pretty close to that of expect. Because you expect something to happen, you consider it in advance. The question here — one noted by Jan Freeman in her discussion of Bierce’s opinion — is what counts as preparation or consideration. If you expect something to happen, you’re almost certainly going to prepare for it, even if only mentally. And in some cases preparing for an event involves a specific type of inaction. For instance, I expect that my friend who told me he was going to get me Scott Pilgrim vs. The World on DVD will follow through, so I have anticipated this action by not watching the movie. The line is blurry, and that’s a good thing.
Why? It gives us flexibility, at least in my idiolect. Using anticipate when there isn’t obvious preparation triggers an implicature that the anticipater has undergone some sort of mental preparation for the event, even if nothing more than psyching oneself up for it. The OED lists “to look forward to” as a definition of anticipate. Expect, on the other hand, is far more neutral in its view of future events. That’s why fans anticipate their favorite bands releasing a new song, in addition to expecting it. There’s also a related sense in the OED of anticipate meaning expect as certain.
And I think that’s the trick with anticipate. People don’t generally use anticipate as a mere synonym of expect. I see it as “expect-plus”, where the addition can be positive feeling, preparation, certainty, or a range of other things. The “slipshod extension” Fowler mentions is not anticipate as mere expect, but anticipate with a wider range of preparations.
I’ve one last sentence, from Jack Lynch, to offer if you remain worried about anticipate and expect fraternizing:
“William Blake certainly didn’t expect Modernist poetry, but in some ways he anticipated it by doing similar things a century earlier.”
The meaning of this sentence is obvious even to someone like me, for whom the primary meaning of anticipate is “expect-plus”.
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*: Are there words for either of these meanings (“spend in advance” or “cause to happen earlier”) in contemporary English? If you know of any, let me know, because I want to use them.
10 comments
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November 25, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Chrissy
Trying to meet the find-a-word-for-this-definition challenge, I was looking for a dictionary online so I could browse its list of words starting with “pre-“. I got distracted by this: Oxford English Dictionary ‘will not be printed again’
November 26, 2010 at 12:05 am
Seattle Gabe
Of course i’m going to send it, you bâtard!
But i won’t send it until two days dés demain. Some silly holiday américain que j’avais oublié prevents me from getting it to you a tiempo. J’ai besoin de ton adresse postale.
November 26, 2010 at 6:58 am
Craig Morris
“despite the fact that”
=
“although”
Just a stylistic matter, not grammar.
November 26, 2010 at 7:13 am
nigeil
Nice post, I really liked the picture though. It actually made me laugh.
November 26, 2010 at 7:37 am
pjsiltala@msn.com
I can’t think of anything (off the top of my head) for “spend in advance”, but if I were going to choose a different word for your Jenga sentence, it would be “precipitate,” which is generally used for an action which causes an event to begin, whether that event is anticipated or expected or not. To me, “anticipate”, while a verb, usually does not involve any action on the part of the anticipator, rather explaining the thoughts of the person involved. It also explains the actions of the person who is anticpating the event: “In anticipation of the Jenga tower falling, I had cleared off the area surrounding the game.” If you use “anticipate” as an active verb, in most cases, it throws the listener/reader off, and it isn’t very precise, which means unnecessary verbiage is needed it clarify what you mean.
The prescriptivist use of “anticipate” as an active verb is archaic and confusing, (possibly, archaic because it is confusing!)
November 26, 2010 at 10:12 am
Warsaw Will
@Craig Morris
Why? Because it’s shorter? For me ‘despite the fact that’ has a higher degree of contrast here than ‘although’ would. Try saying it. I think we would stress the word ‘despite’, but we wouldn’t particularly stress ‘although’, which would almost get lost in what is a relatively long sentence. The way it is written gives it just the right amount of self-deprecation.
November 26, 2010 at 1:56 pm
James Martin
This video might not mean much unless you’re familiar with Simon Schama’s TV programmes. But given the line at 1:22, I couldn’t resist posting it here!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyQe_jDq7oM
November 28, 2010 at 11:32 am
Indignant Desert Birds » Sunday Morning Reading Material (Third Sunday in November.)
[…] been incorrectly using the word anticipate. I shall endeavor to correct […]
November 30, 2010 at 8:19 am
NemaVeze
Indian English uses “prepone” to mean “reschedule an appointment/event to an earlier time.”
November 30, 2010 at 9:07 am
PACW
Since the first time I saw Tim Curry
“shiver with an. . . tic. . . . a . . . . . . . . . pation”
it has been one of my favorite words. Definitely meaning expect-plus!
As for the causing to happen early – I don’t know a good word but have become alarmed at the concept where it refers to the coming apocalypse. Apparently many Christians who support Israel do so with the idea that it needs to stay whole so that it can be destroyed so that the whole world can be destroyed so that God’s truth and love can be proven. There has got to be a special word for that!