Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors - Bill Bryson [140]
predicate. Everything in a sentence that is not part of the subject (i.e., the verb, its qualifiers and complements) is called the predicate. In “The man went to town after work,” The man is the subject and the rest of the sentence is the predicate. The verb alone is sometimes called the simple predicate.
preposition. A word that connects and specifies the relationship between a noun or noun equivalent and a verb, adjective, or other noun or noun equivalent. In “We climbed over the fence,” the preposition over connects the verb climbed with the noun fence. Whether a word is a preposition or a conjunction is often a matter of function. In “The army attacked before the enemy was awake,” before is a conjunction. But in “The army attacked before dawn,” before is a preposition. The distinction is that in the first sentence before is followed by a verb, whereas in the second it is not.
pronoun. A word used in place of a noun or nouns. In “I like walking and reading; such are my pleasures,” such is a pronoun standing for reading and walking. Pronouns have been variously grouped by different authorities. Among the more common groupings are personal pronouns (I, me, his, etc.), relative pronouns (who, whom, that, which), demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, those), and indefinite pronouns (some, several, either, neither, etc.).
subject. The word or phrase in a sentence or clause that indicates who or what is performing the action. In “I see you,” the subject is I. In “Climbing steep hills tires me,” Climbing steep hills is the subject.
substantive. A word or group of words that performs the function of a noun. In “Swimming is good for you,” Swimming is a substantive as well as a gerund.
verb. Verbs can be defined generally (if a bit loosely) as words that have tense and that denote what someone or something is or does. Verbs that have an object are called transitive verbs—that is, the verb transmits the action from subject to an object, as in “He put the book on the table.” Verbs that do not have an object are called intransitive verbs, as in “She slept all night” in these the action is confined to the subject.
When it is necessary to indicate more than simple past or present tense, two or more verbs are combined, as in “I have thought about this all week.” Although there is no widely agreed term for such a combination of verbs, I have for convenience followed Fowler in this book and referred to them as compound verbs. The additional or “helping” verb in such constructions (e.g., have in the example above) is called an auxiliary.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BILL BRYSON’s bestselling books include A Walk in the Woods, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, In a Sunburned Country, Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words, A Short History of Nearly Everything (which earned him the 2004 Aventis Prize), and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Bryson lives in England with his wife.
ALSO BY BILL BRYSON
The Lost Continent
Mother Tongue
Neither Here nor There
Made in America
Notes from a Small Island
A Walk in the Woods
I’m a Stranger Here Myself
Bryson’s Book of Troublesome Words
Bill Bryson’s African Diary
A Short History of Nearly Everything
A Short History of Nearly Everything Illustrated Edition
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Go to the Next Page to Read Chapter 7 from
Bill Bryson’s At Home
Coming in October 2010
An Excerpt from Bill Bryson’s At Home
THE DRAWING ROOM
I
If you had to summarize it in a sentence, you could say that the history of private life is a history of getting comfortable slowly. Until the eighteenth century, the idea of having comfort at home was so unfamiliar that no word existed for the condition. Comfortable meant merely “capable of being consoled.” Comfort was something you gave to the wounded or distressed. The first person to use the word in its modern sense was the writer Horace Walpole, who remarked in a letter to a