The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style_3

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The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style_3 custom 891. Concerning crises eventually touched virtually every A mayor was shot in Japan, and a agency. . . .story in a New York newspaper includedthis sentence: Change “culminate” to ended. The ex- ample is wrong on two scores: To culmi- The Mayor, Hitoshi Motoshima, nate does not mean to end or to be the was reported in critical condition but outcome. Moreover, it is an intransitive out of danger tonight after two hours verb, not transitive; one does not “cul- of surgery. minate” something. Although culminate(d) does belong inIf he was in “critical” condition, how the sentence below, the preposition thatcould he be “out of danger” at the same follows it is not idiomatic.time? Critical in such a context normallymeans dangerous; it pertains to a crisis, a . . . A growing body of scientificcrucial point when the course of a dis- evidence on the dangers of so-calledease—or anything else—can turn in ei- secondhand smoke has culminatedther a favorable or an unfavorable with an influential Environmentaldirection. Could the report have lost Protection Agency report declaringsomething in translation? environmental smoke a “Class A Car- cinogen.” . . .2. Concerning criticism etc. Critical (adjective) has an assortment Make it “culminated in.” The verb isof other meanings, among them crucial, normally followed by in, not “with.”decisive, perilous, and referring to im- CUM. Cum, Latin for with, appears inportant products or materials that are inshort supply. hyphenated combinations in this man- In the sense of judging, critical is not ner: “En route, don’t miss St. Francisnecessarily negative. It can mean charac- Fountain, a Mission landmark lunch-terized by careful and objective judg- counter-cum-candy shop, founded inment or it can pertain to formal 1918.” It becomes a high-flown substi-criticism. Popularly it is more often con- tute for together with or simply and,strued as judging unfavorably or in- mystifying many readers who would un-clined to judge unfavorably. derstand “lunch counter and candy A Nevada newspaper ran the headline shop.” (The piling up of two modifiers“Man is critical after car goes into as well as the compound further compli-canal.” The text beneath it indicated that cates the sample. See Modifiers, 4.)the only person in the car was a woman. The u in cum may be pronounced theMaybe that critical man was the owner. short way—inviting confusion with See also CONDITION. come—or like the oo in book.CRY. See -Y ending. CUSTOM. As an adjective, custom means specially made for an individualCULMINATE. To culminate means customer (a custom suit) or doing workto reach the highest point or the climax to order (a custom tailor).of something. How not to use this verb is A label and a leaflet accompanying aillustrated by a press excerpt. mass-produced blanket say the product was “CUSTOM LOOMED” by a cer- The razing of the International tain manufacturer. As used in commerce, Hotel . . . culminated a crisis that the word is usually empty puffery. DDanglers. See Modifers, 1. “On the other hand, the data in the archives doesn’t reveal the sense thatDARING. A radio network broadcast there’s a broad plan afoot to take overthis phrase: “A daring escape from a Eastern Europe.”medium-security facility outside ofPueblo.” It lacks Colorado and a verb. Is the sentence right or wrong? As a(See Sentence fragment). The main trou- Latin plural, data traditionally wasble, though, is that daring is a word of strictly a plural in English. Thus “Thepraise; it commends one’s adventurous- data in the archives don’t reveal . . .”ness, initiative, boldness, and fearless- Data are pieces of information, particu-ness in a risky endeavor. Take the larly raw facts or figures used as the ba-“daring young man on the flying sis for conclusions or judgments.trapeze,” the subject of song since 1868. ...