Growing Pains

What an honor it is to occupy the coveted Monday-morning slot at Editrix.us! I’m happy to lighten the load for our blogger extraordinaire. For my inaugural post, allow me to hold forth on a pet peeve.

In the old days, we had a whole ball of wax, with its colorful perfect wox. Now we substitute grow, which it is growing more and more common to use transitively, as in grow the economy, grow your business, etc. Bill Clinton was the most visible offender, deploying the phrase as early as June 1992. (Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas actually beat him to the punch, claiming in March of that year that voters had a choice “whether you grow the economy or whether you give out tax breaks”—planks, respectively, of Tsongas’ and Clinton’s campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination.) This use of “grow” is beneath notice in Fowler and Merriam-Webster’s, while Follett deems it “dialectal” (“Americans scorn affectations”, sniffs Modern American Usage, “except for the ones they adopt”). Garner is unequivocal: “[G]row has blossomed as a transitive verb in nonfarming and nongrooming contexts. It is trendy in business jargon….But because many readers will stumble over these odd locutions, the trend should be avoided.” (I don’t much care for the conjunction that begins that last sentence. But I digress.)

“Grow to like it”, proclaims Mr. Safire in high descriptivist dudgeon, “because the transitive use of grow in a citified sense has deep roots in the language and is here to stay. ‘Whan David had regned vii yere in Ebron’, William Caxton wrote in 1481 about Jerusalem, ‘he grewe and amended moche this cyte.’” Nice try, Bill (S., that is), but I can cite the OED just as easily as you, and my copy not only flags this definition as Obs. but specifies the Caxton quotation as a hapax legomenon—the only example of this usage the editors could find anywhere, ever. What we have here is a definition not developing organically but being artificially respirated after a 500-year hiatus.

Safire continues: “Fred Mish, editorial director of Merriam-Webster, says, ‘The transitive use of grow with inanimate objects like business is covered by the basic transitive definition, “to cause to grow.”’ The object of grow doesn’t have to be limited to soybeans or a beard—it can logically apply to growing a business, an economy, a government or a deficit.” Bzzzt! With all due respect to Safire (whose column appeared in 1992) and Mish (whose dictionary retains his grow judgment to this day), they’re confounding definitions here. No one would say “A better fertilizer will grow your soybeans”, or “When the weather is warmer, it grows my beard.” The existing authority is for a transitive grow meaning “raise ex nihilo”, not “develop from an already extant state.” Vivid though the horticultural metaphor may be, I can’t countenance grow in any transitive context where develop, enhance, enlarge, expand, improve—or, for that matter, the perfectly serviceable cause to, help or make grow—is at hand. Grow up already!

—The Redoubtable Mr. K——

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Comments

[JD]

If I 'grow my hair', isn't that an example of transitive 'grow' meaning 'develop from an already extant state' (unlike 'grow a beard')? After all, if I say 'my girlfriend's grown her hair' you wouldn't assume that she had recently been bald.

[Editrix]

Dear JD,

Mr. K-- is leaving for D.C. today and won't be back until as early as tomorrow. I'm sure he'll catch up on his blogging and respond to your comment then. In the meantime, I'm making like Switzerland (or, as George Bush would say, Sweden) and staying out of it.

Thanks for the comment.

Sincerely,
-Ed.

[The Redoubtable Mr. K--]

I'm here!

I take your point, JD, but don't we have the verb "grow out" for situations like this? Somehow "grown her hair" sounds funny to me.

--Mr. K--

[Peter Sokolowski]

Dr. Mish probably agrees with the Redoubtable Mr. K about the insufficiency of "to cause to grow" since the second transitive sense in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, reads "to promote the development of." This sense was added for the Eleventh Edition in 2003, and Dr. Mish has since retired.

[goofy]

"I grew my hair" sounds funny?

What do you mean by "artificially respirated"? It seems like a natural metaphoric extension.

[Editrix]

Dear everyone,

OK, I'm going against my earlier pledge of neutrality. I (honestly!) just stumbled upon Bill Walsh's entry in "Lapsing into a Comma" regarding this subject, and I feel compelled to share it:

"Avoid using 'to grow' as a transitive verb meaning 'to expand' or 'to increase the size of.' As a transitive verb it means 'to raise or cultivate,' as in vegetables.

"WRONG: Andre Agassi grew tennis as a spectator sport.

"WRONG: The newspaper is trying to grow its circulation.

"RIGHT: The newspaper's circulation grew.

"RIGHT: Oliver Douglas grew apples."

Sincerely,
-Ed.

P.S.: For what it's worth, whenever my hair is at some in-between stage -- like now, when pigtails are the only way I can make myself presentable -- I tell people that I am "growing out my hair" or "growing my hair out." Somehow, the "out" makes all the difference to me. I would never say, "I'm growing my hair," but "I'm growing my hair out" feels totally natural. Maybe "out" is acting as a particle, which slightly changes "grow"'s shade of meaning (like how saying, "I threw up my breakfast," isn't the same thing as saying, "I threw my breakfast"). "I'm growing my hair" = "I am performing a Chia-pet-esque experiment in which I am cloning a sample of my hair in a Petri dish." "I'm growing my hair out" = "I am tolerating these pigtails now so that later I can have a long, swingy hairdo."

P.P.S.: However, men DO say "I'm growing a goatee," and I never bat an eye when I hear it. Argh. This is all getting very confusing. I knew I should have stayed neutral.

[goofy]

Does Walsh provide any reasons or evidence, or is it wrong just because he says so? If "I'm trying to grow apples" is ok, I don't see how a metaphorical extension like "The newspaper is trying to grow its circulation" can be wrong.

[Editrix]

Dear goofy,

No, Mr. Walsh does not provide any evidence. However, because most of the old guard (e.g., Garner, Fowler, Follett, and 80 percent of the "American Heritage" usage panel) and some of the new guard (e.g., Patricia T. O'Conner, who wrote of "grow," "Speaking for myself, I loathe it") agree with him, I see his position as part of a trend, not just a personal preference. For this reason, I give it weight.

That being said, I can see your point -- as can William Safire, which is saying something. "Growing" is now in wide circulation. If you google "grow your business," you get over 3 million hits. If someone says, "I'm trying to grow my business," no one would mistake "business" for a rare variety of heirloom tomato; everyone would know exactly what the speaker meant. "The Chicago Manual of Style" -- my editing bible -- recognizes the increasing popularity of "grow," and although "Chicago" advises writers and editors to employ the use "cautiously if at all," it doesn't say NOT to use it. And, lest we forget, Webster's has formally recognized that "grow" can mean "promote the development of."

The thing is, I'm a prescriptivist at heart. I like rules. I like rules a lot. So if enough people with enough credentials come to a consensus on something, it's in my nature to go along. When it comes to language, I think rules keep things consistent and make readers feel welcome, not unlike a chain restaurant. But aside from all that, when I hear someone say "grow your business" or "grow your circulation," I feel as if I've stumbled into "Office Space" -- as if, at any moment, some tie-wearing middle manager is going to approach me about my TPS reports. It's the same way I feel when someone uses "status" as a verb, or says "lessons learned" or "path forward" or "issues," or employs any other corporate jargon. It makes me feel as if I'm being treated like a drone, and I don't want my readers to feel that way. Of course, if I were editing a trade magazine for newspaper publishers, I might feel differently: that kind of magazine is SUPPOSED to sound corporate. But in documents meant for a general audience, which could include publishers and hairdressers and police officers and small-animal vets, I'd want the text to feel as inclusive as possible, so I'd nix "grow their circulation" in favor of "expand their circulation." When I get right down to it, my decision isn't based on grammatical fine points. It's based on tone.

Maybe I'm overemphasizing the faceless-corporation connotations of "grow." But speaking for myself, I loathe it.

If I had a descriptivist streak (and -- let's face it –- a more healthy view of corporate America), I'd probably agree with you.

Sincerely,
-Ed.

[goofy]

Dear Editrix,

I had a discussion about this on another forum, and I thought you'd be interested in what I learned. I no longer think this is a metaphoric extension of the transitive sense. I think it's a causative/inchoative alternation similar to "the ice melted/the sun melted the ice."

"I grew my business" is causative, it means "I caused my business to grow." But "I grew plants" isn't causative; it means something closer to "cultivate". That is, if I was a fertility god I could magically cause plants to grow, but I wouldn't be growing plants. So "I grew my business" isn't your everyday metaphoric extension, I think. Perhaps this is why some people don't like it.

"The business grew/ I grew the business" is the same causative/inchoative alternation as the "the ice melted/the sun melted the ice" or "the door closed/I closed the door", "the beer pours/I pour the beer", or "the glass broke/I broke the glass."