Saturday, October 22, 2005
‘Myself’ as non-reflexive, and the etymology of ‘cockpit’
From Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words newsletter this week:
MYSELF, ME AND I
Heavens, what trouble I got into last week when I wrote “You can hear an item with Adam Jacot de Boinod and myself”. The chorus of condemnation was loud and sustained. The trouble is that the “rule” about not using “myself” in this situation has been
drummed into generations of school children without much to justify
it except a vague feeling on the part of grammarians and educators
that it seemed somehow wrong. Modern style guides point to the body
of historical use of the construction as a justification for using
it. In the Third Edition of Fowler, Robert Burchfield remarks that
such forms are “beyond reproach” and quotes a sentence parallel to
mine from a booklet of his own. But Bryan Garner, in his Modern
American Usage, is against it, marking a stylistic difference that
seems to exist between American and British English.
Earlier:
Q. If I don’t find out where the air force term ‘cockpit’ came
from, I’m going to go mad. What do you think? [Rick Loiacono,
Florida]