This week: What's an essay? And how come no one uses it as a verb anymore? We look into it. Also, a bit of housekeeping and some linguistic links you can use and then the footnotes to get us out. Here we go!
So, what's an essay? Take your time, I'll wait. You'd think it would be easier to answer, wouldn't you? But essay seems to be one of those words that is easier to define by what it isn't rather than by what it is -- an essay is not a report. It's not a letter. It's not an article. It's not a diary entry. But it does share a lot with all of them...
In my classes1 I usually crib from the good people at Merriam-Webster:
a : an analytic or interpretative literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view
But, remember, I teach ESL. And even at the university level, explaining "interpretative2 literary composition" takes some work. Not to mention this second part of the definition:
b : something resembling such a composition
Which, as a definition is somewhat less than helpful, tautological though it is - an essay is something that is like an essay. Perhaps Wikipedia can come to the rescue?
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story.
Perhaps not. So, back to square one, what is an essay? Over the past few years, I've found myself turning back to the verb definition of an essay to help explain the noun definition. Merriam-Webster again:
to try; attempt
Now, as a modern verb3, essay ranks right up there with the Quixotesque use of tilt and sally: We shall sally forth from within our keep and essay a provocation against the giants, whereupon, should we succeed, we will, in turn, tilt at them until they are vanquished. Or something like that. But, as a synonym for try, it's something we can build on to create a better definition for the noun:
An essay is a piece of writing in which you try to show your point of view.
As a definition, the above line isn't perfect45. But when I teach the actual mechanics of writing an essay, the two most important factors are always the author's point of view and the intended audience. Everything else - the style, the tone, the length, the word choice, the medium, everything - stems from those two factors. Because until you know what you want to say and to whom you want to say it, you can't write an essay.
Stay curious,
J
Housekeeping
The Learned 2022 Color Spectacular #1 will be hitting the inboxes of paid subscribers on Friday (or Saturday, depending on time zones) this week. For reference, the Color Spectaculars are a special issue of Learned that goes out 6 times a year to paid subscribers only. They're a bit longer than the usual letter and are usually more personal as I write about the issues that have caught my attention and how they're affecting me, personally. If this sounds like something that would appeal to you, subscribe now! (Actually, subscribe any time and I'll make sure you get any back issues for the year of your subscription.)
Linguistic Links
The first link of the week comes from a fellow Substacker: Hugh Garry's Formats Unpacked is an always interesting look at media and formats from years gone by. This week, however, he's taken a slight detour to break down "Wordle" the game that has probably made its way around your social media feeds over the past couple of months. I'll admit it: I've played. Sometimes, I've even won. Still doesn't beat a good crossword though.
And, speaking of crosswords, the Public Domain Review, a newsletter "dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas" has a long history of crosswords that traces their origins through several different iterations of literary word games until they arrived in their present format. It's well worth the read.
And, speaking of things to read - and this is less linguistic than just...words - in my round-up of round-ups from 2021, I missed a really good one: Phil Gyford has compiled a list of favorite asks from web-pioneer Metafilter. There are some real gems on here and several rabbit holes to dive deep into.
But, just to end on an actual linguistic note, here's a Reddit thread about an ongoing phenomenon in Japanese where native speakers have been turning loanwords into verbs in a decidedly non-standard way. As usual with these sorts of things, the current trend is the result of several smaller, non-related trends smashing together and becoming more than the sum of their parts. It can be a bit difficult to navigate the entire thread but if you do, there are some real gems to be found. And if that's not a metaphor for 2022, then I don't know what is. Stay safe out there.
I teach two different essay-writing classes every semester. I love them; they are the bane of my existence. Seeing what my students are interested in, what matters to them, what new perspectives they bring to matters is always the best part of my job. Correcting their grammar and getting them to understand why we write like we write when we write essays -- Sisyphus has an easier task (with all apologies to Neil Gaiman.)
Yeah, there are actually five syllables there: in-tur-pri-tey-tiv That first t tries to hide there in syllable four. I kept reading it as "interprative" which I'm pretty sure isn't a word. Yet.
I ran a search in the iWeb corpus of English out of curiosity. Essay, as a verb is there, but not on any site you'd know off the top of your head. Almost all of the top uses were either academic (and referencing archaic or historical data) or from fantasy fiction. To put it another way, as a noun, essay occurs in the corpus 342,835 times. As a verb, 1,353.
Actually, it is. Fight me.
Okay, if that doesn’t work for you, try this - the other tactic I use when explaining essays to my Japanese students is just to break down the Japanese words for essay. There are two that are in common use. One transliterates into “discourse-sentence” and the other into “sentence-composition.” Maybe I should just stick to using one of those?
Joel, you are on the right track for another reason. When I read Montaigne's Essays in college, I learned that "Essay" in French means "try."