fresnelly

Are there strong rules for the use of either "on" or "upon" in a sentence?

Is it just a matter of style and formality or is there a concrete reason to use one or the other?

I know you can't start a story "Once on a time..."

However, these examples don't quite have the same dissonance to my ear:

"I can make adjustments based on/upon your suggestions."
"The cat is on/upon my head!"
"On/upon reflection, I'm going to side with the watermelon."

What are your thoughts on/upon this?

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Baraka_Guru

Both on and upon are prepositions meaning essentially the same thing.

Upon is merely more formal; however, uses such as "once upon a time," "row upon row," and "the autumn is upon us" are idiomatic and thus the alternative seems unnatural and jarring.

In all your examples, either word would work fine, but you will notice that upon sounds more formal.


With files from the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Jetée

I was raised to speak (proper / homeland) English, so upon was engrained within my early vocabularium.

Now, living in North America for some time, it's become more of a personal preference, and as you were wise to point out, a matter of perceived agreeable dissonance.


To make it easy though, the resident desktop encyclo- offered me (you, us all) this definition for upon:

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Baraka_Guru

Tell that to Winnie the Pooh author, A. A. Milne, who wrote a book entitled Once on a Time....

EDIT:
As an aside: language and how usage evolves is kinda funny. For example, we all know that (now cheap) phrasing used in mysteries and thrillers: "...when all of a sudden...."

What if I told you that older texts used something different? Try this on for size: "...when of a sudden...." The all crept in there and now all of us use and know it.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

fresnelly

Interesting. Kind of like "Y'all/You all..."

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Lindy

Which I like because it is perfectly gender neutral.
It jars me when someone (like a waiter) says "You guys ready to order?" to a mixed gender group. I know it's become common, but it still derails me.

Here's a clue: If it has tits, it's not a guy. Guys have balls. Some more than others, but you get the idea.

Lindy

Baraka_Guru

You know who has tits? Dolls.

See, that's the thing: I don't know of anyone who refers to the female gender as "dolls." Could you imagine a waiter approaching a table of women and saying, "You dolls ready to order?" Or even a mixed table with, "You guys & dolls ready to order?" I might on a very rare occasion hear someone use "gals," but it hardly ever registers on the radar anymore.

"Guys" applied even to a group of females only doesn't jar me at all. I've accepted it as a gender-neutral term (colloquially anyway), which is interesting now that I think of it.

What's not so much the case is when someone refers to a female using man: "Oh, man, did you see that?" or "Hey, man, what's up?" I hear it all the time. In many cases, I don't really think about it, but sometimes I think to myself, "Why did she just call her a man?"

Gotta love language!

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

snowy

I've had a couple conversations recently about the use of guys as a gender-neutral term, actually. It seems like a lot of people my age and younger just accept that it is. It came up at work because my female coworkers and I always use that term in regards to our mixed gender groups, i.e. "Hey guys, it's time to put your coats on." This then led to a conversation with friends wherein we agreed that "guys" is so commonly used these days to refer to a group of people of either gender that is has become gender-neutral.

I love how language lives.

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AleaIactaEst

I once lived in an area of Northern Ireland where people always referred to girls as dolls. I thought it was really peculiar. Generally it was something along the lines of "Here! Wee doll!" which roughly translates into "You there." The area was largely Scottish colonials who didn't care particularly how they used language. Other examples included "Miss learned me that," (The teacher taught me that already) and "Yer well feared." (Your scared.)

Strange, strange place.

Lindy

How about ladies, women, girls, folks, or even just that wonderful second-person singular and plural personal pronoun "you" standing alone? And that's what I liked about Y'all/You all in fresnelly's post. We just need to move Y'all/You all up North of the Mason-Dixon line and overcome our urban sophisticate aversion to things Southern (except food, of course) and we'll have a new gender neutral second person pronoun.

Nobody uses "dolls" anymore except to describe a child's plaything or a collectible.

Or maybe a waiter at a dinner theater?Guys and Dolls - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Or the diner style places with the real or pseudo Southern Belle waitress, where every customer is doll, or hun, or sweetie or something similar.

Especially since in France "Guy" is is a male given name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_(given_name)


And I do! Plus one

Ironic, isn't it, after all those years trying to lose the accepted use of chairman, postman, policeman, etc we now want to add a male term to the gender neutral pool of words? After all of the years spent replacing supposedly "male" terms with awkwordities like "Department Chair" (hey, what about the department desk?) now we add a new male term.

Another plus one
And in the long run, of course, usage will trump all!

Lindy

Baraka_Guru

It's interesting that you should view it as "adding a male term to a neutral pool of words." I think it's more along the lines of neutering a male term.

As always.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Lindy

Well, yeah. I agree. It's also interesting that women will accept neutering a formerly male term and applying it to females. Men never do that. Can you think of any?
Men never accept being called by a formerly female term. "Hey guys, gals is now officially gender neutral. We men are now OK with being called gals, right?"

Lindy

fresnelly

Bitch is sort of crossing gender boundaries now. "What up, Bitches?"

It's still derogatory but who knows where we'll be in 20 years.

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Baraka_Guru

I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm reminded how, in recent years, the word actor has come to stand in for "thespian" of either gender, meaning that actress is becoming archaic. And this reminds me of the truly archaic race-based feminizations that are now deemed rather offensive: Jewess and Negress come to mind (of course Negro applied to blacks is quite archaic in many circles now too).

But as far as a feminine term becoming a neutral term, I can't think of any. However, perhaps we can consider changes in terms for political correctness, such as stewardess. Not only was the femininity of the term problematic, but now there are males who hold these jobs, which makes the title "flight attendant" more apt. The same goes for seamstress, I imagine, and other terms like it.

It's not a matter of acceptance so much as it is usage. I suppose one possibility of this is the term nurse, as applied to those in the nursing profession. Some people say, "Oh, he's a male nurse," when it's actually apt to just say, "Oh, he's a nurse." Here's the Oxford note on the origin of the word:
So what you see is that nurse is a word that does have a feminine influence (the Old French nourice from the feminized Latin nutricia). Plus, of course, nursing was deemed a female profession for a very long time.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

rsl12

I think you meant to quote the usage note, which is actually pretty informative:

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