Nickel And Dime

Also known as being NibbledToDeath (which is less of an AmericanCulturalAssumption).

In other words, you're being charged for every little thing. Each of them tolerable, but in concert, significant.

Also known as Death of a Thousand Cuts.

The following discussion boils down to:

True. But note that for the others, they may not understand the phrase at all (unless it is in the right context to give some clues), making its syntax moot. But there is indeed a transitional phase, where someone may have heard a phrase a bit, but hasn't internalized it completely, and then your summary may apply without reservation.

We (or some others) need to tidy what follows.

Odd that it isn't "Nickeled And Dimed", rather than "Nickel And Dimed". Clearly "Nickel And Dime" is being treated as a single noun which is then converted to a verb and put in the past tense. Very odd, but then, we all know that "verbing wierds language".

Not at all; putting the "-ed" at the end of the phrase is in fact the only strictly grammatical approach (in any language where the question arises), precisely because the phrase is an atomic widely known quotation, making it technically headless, rather than having constituents and a head. This is well explained in Steven Pinker's excellent The Language Instinct. People get confused about this in English only if they stop and think about it, analyze it incorrectly, and then "hypercorrect". In flowing conversational English, everyone just does it correctly.

Nope, not true. You're assuming that "everyone" knows the phrase "Nickel and Dime" as "an atomic widely known quotation". This is an AmericanCulturalAssumption. In flowing conversational English between people who did not learn their English in the USA it simply doesn't work like that.

Wait just a minute! No speaker of any dialect of English would say the phrase in the first place if they hadn't heard it before! My analysis only applies in the first place to speakers who are familiar with the phrase, not to listeners who are relatively unfamiliar with it.

To say that one has heard the phrase is different from saying that it is "an atomic widely known quotation". I have heard the phrase. I was going to use it but decided that it sounded odd. I commented on that. Perhaps it's grammatically correct (whatever that means) to someone for whom it is "an atomic widely known quotation", and grammatically incorrect for someone for whom it is not.

Pinker is no doubt correct in his analysis, but the conclusion relies on the assumption given, and the assumption is false. To my ear, and after a straw poll to the ears of those with whom I work or socialise, "Nickeled And Dimed" is more natural.

But you're talking about how it sounds to speakers who wouldn't utter it themselves, since it's not a familiar phrase, so that's a different subject. In all languages, people analyse things they're not familiar with differently than things they're intimately familiar with. This leads to technical "reinterpretation", and is a major driving force in the evolution of languages in general.

Er, so having heard the phrase am I not allowed to use it? Of course I'm allowed to use it, but to me it sounds ungrammatical. If I say it in what I think is a grammatically correct form, native users will say it's ungrammatical. Isn't language interesting.

(As a side note, please do not "correct" the English spellings of "socialise" given above and here. They are part of this discussion, not errors.)

I don't believe I did; I am familiar with and comfortable with both American and British spellings of most words, and rarely feel any motivation to change one to the other, even in my own writing, where I sometimes use British spellings accidentally.

Oh, you just mean in the future. Well, some wiki Howto or another says that this is an American wiki, and American English is the preferred dialect, and so WikiGnomes might change British to American, but not to get too bent out of shape if British English is used. Contrary to your claim, the word "socialise" hasn't been under discussion, so if someone changed its spelling, no big deal.

I didn't claim it had been, I was trying to preempt a future change because it reflects the point under discussion.

This is somewhat related to the existence of phrasal clitics, such as possessive "-s" added to entire phrases, as in "The Queen of England's knickers", where the possessive modifies the entire phrase "The Queen of England".

See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case

Thank you for the reference, I found it interesting and illuminating. It also reinforces my long-standing belief that linguistics is a branch of witchcraft, and all who dabble in it are risking their souls for dubious promises of nebulous rewards.

Indeed so. It is still a black art, not a science, although it is making progress. It's similar to the era when Alchemy was transitioning to Natural Philosophy. But we still want for e.g. a periodic table of the syntactic elements; everyone disagrees. Nonetheless things are in better shape now than they were 50 years ago. :-)

That's a bald and bold claim. 8-)

50 years ago the grammarians were in charge. NuffSaid.

Not to pour gasoline on the fire, but as a native speaker of American English (from the East Coast, if it matters), I've only ever heard and used "nickeled and dimed". So for us, that is the atomic phrase.

The atomicity of the phrase is only an issue if the correct past tense is "nickel and dimeed" (formed by sticking an "ed" on the end without regard to internal structure - specifically the presence of a terminal 'e').

It strikes me that the argument that "nickel and dimed" is correct is parallel to the argument that "mother-in-laws" rather than "mothers-in-law" is the correct plural of "mother-in-law". My friends' mothers-in-law and I are all quite clear on what the correct plural is here in the UK - rmsgrey

CategoryIdiom

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