Welcome to the third installment of my series, in which I review the book “Says Who?" by linguist Anne Curzan.
Some people think that 'fun' shouldn’t be an adjective at all—only a noun. For most of its life, fun has been a noun and a verb. It was only in the midtwentieth century that it took on the role of an adjective. While it’s unclear what caused this language shift, one can make an educated guess. My interpretation of Curzan’s argument is that some generations of kids in the mid 20th century unintentionally reinterpreted ‘fun’ as an adjective because they were still learning the language—as they say, “don’t shoot the messenger”.
This was probably exacerbated by the lack of stern corrections by authority figures, such as teachers and parents. The author suggests imagining a kid that hears their parent say, “That game was fun!” The parent may have meant ‘fun’ as a noun, but the kid might have interpreted it as an adjective. Once they’d assimilated ‘fun’ as an adjective, they’d form its comparative and superlative forms by applying the same rules as other one-syllable adjectives—hence ‘funner’ and ‘funnest’.
The author was a member of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. In the 2015 usage survey, she was presented with five example sentences involving the adjective ‘fun’ and its inflected forms ‘funner’ and ‘funnest’.
Here are the sentences:
- That party was really fun.
- That party was so fun.
- We went to a fun party.
- That party was funner than I expected.
- That was the funnest party I’ve been to this year.
The vast majority of the panel deemed the three sentences with ‘fun’ to be “perfectly acceptable in formal contexts”. In contrast, however, the two sentences about ‘funner’ and ‘funnest’ were rated completely unacceptable, with disapproval rates of 88% and 80%, respectively.
It seems that this is an issue exclusive to America. Why? Look up ‘funner’ in the Oxford Dictionary and see for yourself 😉. Regardless, after reading this chapter about ‘funner’, I must admit that I’m even more confused. As they say, “ignorance is bliss.” I would greatly appreciate any insights into the matter.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
First of all, let me compliment you on your writing! As for fun and funner, like @yumiyumayume said, languages evolve and certain things just take and become part of the vernacular, while others are not so readily accepted for a number of reasons (we recently discussed the fact that the double negative sounds stupid, for instance). But in this particular case, we see something that's very unique to English: we constantly throw nouns into the role of adjectives in something as innocent as chicken soup, for instance, to something harder to parse like emancipation proclamation. I've even seen people use verbs as adjectives. I recently read about a restaurant in Texas that's described as "the eatinest, drinkinest, dancinest place in Texas". If you don't get the "grammar" here, it means that this place has the most eating, drinking and dancing of any establishment in the state: https://calendar.austinchronicle.com/location/coupland-inn-and-dancehall-11821936 In other words, English is so elastic as languages go that it's hard to draw any hard and fast lines. As native English speakers, we hear non-standard things all around us all the time, and we're happy to understand them, even if we'd never repeat them. Great post!
Since I got to know the Heritage Dict. I always stood for having a Usage Panel in Spanish, instead of this freaking "Royal" thing (RAE)
@CocoPop Thank you for your compliment and valuable insights! The idea of using verbs as adjectives sounds rather intriguing.
@eugen_blick I'd never heard of a Usage Panel in English before reading this book. It seems to me that the Heritage Dictionary's Usage Panel wasn't nearly as influential as the RAE. I used the past tense because the Usage Panel was discontinued in 2018. In English, there are several self-proclaimed language authorities promoting their own usage guides. In contrast, people in Spain appear to follow the RAE's guidelines to a T. I'm not sure the same holds true for Latin Americans, particularly regarding anglicisms.
I mean, perhaps not just one Usage Panel... There could be several UPs... providing guidance and learned perspectives regarding correct or accepted uses of Spanish, instead of an institution that issues decrees you're supposed to follow blindly
To shun adjectifying attributive nouns is even more last century than to religiously avoid splitting infinitives.
Very clever!
I'll admit I'm not very good at using the OED, but I tried looking up "funner" and couldn't find it. I (from the part of Scotland that's been speaking English the longest) would say "more fun" and "most fun" rather than "funner" and "funnest".
@eugen_blick I wasn't trying to argue for or against the RAE. I'm just a beginner in Spanish. Is the RAE really the only institution in the world that provides guidance on language-related issues?
@quassnoi 🤯🤯🤯
@schmamie That's exactly the point! There are no entries for 'funner' and 'funnest' in the OED.
Thank you for sharing the history of fun. It's fascinating to read.
I've read when and how British English ended up being the current style, and your post reminded me of that.
Using the OED with my university log in, there are two example sentences that have 'funner' and 'funnest'! It's under meaning & use, down under the adjective header.
I think this it is one of those cases where we don't use these comparative and superlative forms on the word 'fun' often, so no one has conventionalised which form is most suitable yet. Similarly is 'wrong' -- my dad said 'wrongest' the other day, but I don't often hear 'most wrong' either. I would agree with Amie, I think in Australia we would say most fun, etc. I guess that would align with America wanting to be different from England English, like how we write 'colour' and they write 'color'
I hear the comparative and superlative forms all the time here in the states. According to Ngrams, British English only uses funnest thing and funnest part: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=funnest+*&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en-GB&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false But American English uses it with a bunch of other words: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=funnest+*&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en-US&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false
@Simone- Ohh haha I'm just dense 😅
@Simone- I didn't think you were for or against RAE, just saying that typical Usage Panel input ("80% of the panel disapprove this use", etc.) sound better to me as guidance than these RAE statements that look like they have the force of a law (at least many people take them this way)
Interesting:
"The Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) was a group of approximately 200 prominent language professionals, including writers, journalists, scholars, and public figures, who provided expert opinions on disputed or evolving English language usage.
"Established in 1969 as a response to the perceived permissiveness of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, the panel was designed to offer a prescriptive counterbalance by assessing the acceptability of specific words, phrases, and grammatical constructions. Their evaluations were compiled into usage notes that appeared in the dictionary, often including historical data showing shifts in opinion over time.
"The panel’s decisions were not always unanimous; for example, in 2014, 70% of panelists approved the use of "anticipate" to mean "forestall," while only slightly over half accepted its more uncommon sense of "act in a way that blocks or vitiates the action of another". Similarly, the panel was split on issues like the use of "bimonthly" (meaning either every two months or every two weeks), and on whether "data" could be treated as a singular mass noun, with 66% accepting the singular usage in 2005. The panel also addressed contentious topics such as the acceptability of "snuck" as the past tense of "sneak" and the use of "impact" as a verb.
"Despite its influence, the panel was criticized for being initially dominated by older white men, though efforts were made over time to increase diversity. Some experts, like Stephen Perrault of Merriam-Webster, argued that the panel’s near-even splits made it less useful as a definitive authority, as a single vote could influence the outcome. Nevertheless, members like Barbara Wallraff and Roy Blount Jr. embraced their role as guardians of linguistic precision, with Blount even joking about using a stick to correct others’ language errors.
"The Usage Panel was officially discontinued by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on February 1, 2018, citing the declining demand for print dictionaries. This marked the end of a 54-year tradition, though the historical data and usage notes compiled during its operation remain valuable resources for understanding the evolution of American English."
@eugen_blick Thanks for sharing! Citing the declining demand for print dictionaries as the reason for discontinuing the Usage Panel seems like a weak justification to me.