Is they or are they? Grits, I mean. The
Grits Grammar War (see the May 4 post “First Food for First Family”)
can polarize language pundits and mavens into two extreme camps with no
grey area in between: Grits is a singular noun, like news, which is a something made up of a bunch of pieces, ends in s, but acts as one something. So, “News is a staple of the American information junkie.” And, “Grits is a breakfast staple in the South.” Grits just looks plural. That’s merely perception. “Hell no,” says the other extreme. We’re dealing with reality, not perception. The word grits is a plural noun. You can plainly see that: it ends in s because grits are made up of lots of pieces. It’s like measles and scissors, one thing ending in s that is composed of more than one. You cain’t have just one – a grit, a measle, or a scissor. Plural, plain and simple. By the way, “cain’t” is a very Southern way of saying “can’t.” Northerners will probably get used to that about the time they get used to grits. This Grammar War was likely ignited unknowingly when FLOTUS Michelle Obama let the cornmeal out of the bag during a kitchen tour
before a state dinner the same night as the 2009 Oscars. She told one
of the culinary students that the White House chef cooked up some “mean
waffles and grits.” Show time for grits. Pre-emptive Poles Those grits mavens at the is pole and at the are
pole say, “You’re either with us or against us.” That attitude is what
issue-polarizing is made of. So, maybe Rush Limbaugh is behind
revitalizing the Grits Grammar War. By the looks of him, he’s also
trying to corner the grits market. Truth outs. Creating polarity on the grits issue could be an attempt to discredit and dishonor the Obama’s good name; it is not just a little more subtle that saying, “I hope he fails!” Limbaugh could also be getting revenge for the Dems calling him the de facto head of the GOP, probably an attempt to make an end-run around any credible leader. The irony, of course, is that this Grits Grammar War raged for a while in The New York Times, with food guru Craig Claiborne at the center. I suppose this fact could indicate a left-wing conspiracy. So
maybe James Carville is stirring things up, suggesting that laughing at
GRITS is tantamount to assaulting the Southern Way of Life. This way,
Southerners by the droves would run to the Democratic Party. More on this conflict in the next Grits Grammar War post. Meanwhile, what the heck is/are grits? Lye Grits Cornmeal
is ground corn; hominy is/are dried, hulled corn kernels; grits is/are
finely ground hominy. You have to boil grits in water to make a kind of
porridge; you used to be able to buy #2 cans of hominy, but I don’t know
if you still can. I will find out my next trip to Piggly Wiggly. “Hulled”
is the key word in how to deal with hominy. Southerners of a certain
age are aware of what might be considered a disgusting method for
hulling hominy – with Red Devil lye. (Ooops, bad news, lyers Craig Claiborne, originally from Mississippi, knew about whole hominy kernels long before he became one of the Kings of Culinary America and food editor for The New York Times, as detailed in a June 23, 1982 New York Timespiece.
I
have an old-fashioned recipe for the preparation of whole hominy,
sometimes referred to as lye hominy. It is attributed to the cookbook of
Mrs. J.W.T. Faulkner, grandmother of William Faulkner. It begins, “Take
2 or 3 quarts of large (kernel) dried corn and put it in a large iron
pot with a pint of strong lye.” You boil it “all day” until the “eye”
comes off. That is a perfectly valid recipe; many others call for
soaking the dried corn in a liquid containing wood ash; in “The Joy of
Cooking” Irma Rombauer explains the wood ash as an attempt to give
hominy calcium value.
Gross. Claiborne
wanted to convince Northerners that whole hominy and grits are
delectable and worth looking into. “In that they all derive from the
same base - dried kernels of corn, whole or ground - it is scarcely
surprising that they team notably well with grated cheese and chilies,”
he wrote. Here’s Claiborne’s cheese and chilies recipe, which he suggests pairs with his grillades very well.
Craig Claiborne’s Cheese Grits Casserole 2-½ cups water ½ cup grits, preferably stone-ground. Salt to taste 2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese ½ teaspoon garlic, minced fine 3 tablespoons (more or less to taste) jalapeno pepper, chopped fine 4 eggs, lightly beaten 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce. 1. Bring water to boil in saucepan and gradually add grits, stirring. Add salt to taste. Cover and cook about 25 minutes. 2. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees. 3. 3. Add 1-3/4 cups of cheese to the grits and stir. Add garlic, pepper, eggs and Worcestershire. Blend well. 4.
Pour mixture into a two-quart casserole and sprinkle top with remaining
one-quarter cup of cheese. Place in oven and bake 25 minutes.
In addition to his great grits recipes, he took a firm stand on the grits grammatical correctness issue. We will dissect this correctness in posts to come.
In Part I, posted June 14, we asked the
question: “Is they or are they?” Grits, that is. The answer remained
unclear. To continue. . .
Craig Claiborne, originally from Mississippi, became one of the King’s of Culinary America and food editor for The New York Times. He was a grits heavyweight and weighed in on the Grits Grammar War, taking a firm stand on whether grits is/are singular/plural. In an August 23, 1976, Times piece, in which his Southern and writing good manners show in his refusal to refer to himself as I, Craig Claiborne, took his stand. Notice also what a gentleman he is. Compare
his demeanor to that of blowhard Rush Limbaugh, who in my opinion, may
be behind this resurgence of the Grits War as a way of defaming the
Obama’s and getting revenge on the Dems for naming him head of the GOP.
The subject can be polarizing. Claiborne wrote:
(We) felt notably secure in stating recently that grits, that celebrated Southern cereal, constituted a plural noun.
We staunchly defend this opinion; but we do feel moved to give the
opposition a moment of self defense. We heard from a fellow
Mississippian, who shall go nameless as follows:
“I
wonder whether you [Craig Claiborne] have quietly fallen victim of a
Yankee malaise, one which causes even editors of dictionaries, alas, to
refer to grits as a plural noun. . . . [You need to] come back home
where grits is IT, not them. Do Yankees refer to those oatmeal? Does one
eat one grit or many? Isn’t it supposed at least by tradition, to be a
singularly singular noun? Please say it’s so.”
Scoreboard One for are and one for is.
The unnamed source from Mississippi has a point: I am diligently
searching the dictionaries, style manuals, and grammar books in my spare
time for the answer so that you don’t have to; I’ll reveal the answer
as it reveals itself. Remember, by the way, “cain’t” is a very
Southern way of saying “can’t.” Northerners will probably get used to
that about the time they get used to grits. Is/are grits a collective noun or do you look under “Plurals” in stylebooks and manuals? Since Claiborne wrote for The New York Times, let’s start there. Style Manuals The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly. Times Books, 1999. Under
“number of subject and verb,” pgs. 234-235: Sums of money are usually
treated as singular because the focus is on the sum. . . . Ten dollars buys less now than five did then. Aside:
I wonder when “then” was back in 1999! Does ten dollars still buy less
now in the Recession than five did then? I wonder if “then” might be ten
years later, or NOW, 2009! Under “Plurals,” p. 262: Some words that are plural in form have singular meanings: measles; news. They take singular verbs. But then the manual gives a couple of words ending in s that can be either singular or plural, depending on use, like ethics and politics. I guess it stands to reason, since politics is/are so confusing anyway. So, no score from here. A Tie and a Recipe So
far it’s tied. This is a good place to pause with a great Claiborne
soup and grits recipe before going on to more style manuals,
dictionaries, and grammar books in Part III coming soon. In a March 2, 1967, New York Times
piece, Claiborne recounted visiting with a Montgomery, Ala., “stately
matron,” Mrs. Wiley Hill, Jr., in her Southern mansion where she served She-crab and Lobster Soup paired with Grits Soufflé. She-crab and Lobster Soup
4 cups Italian style plum tomatoes 1 cup shelled green peas 1 cup milk 2 cups heavy cream 1 pound lump crab meat one-and-one-half-pound lobster, cooked Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste Cayenne pepper to taste ¼ teaspoon powdered ginger 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce ½ cup plus 6 tablespoons dry sherry wine 6 tablespoons whipped cream Paprika Finely chopped parsley
1.
Cook the tomatoes over moderate heat until reduced to a paste, about 30
minutes, stirring frequently to prevent sticking and burning. 2. Cook peas in salted water to cover until tender. Put through a sieve or food mill and add to tomatoes. 3.
Add milk, cream and crab meat. Remove all meat from lobster shell and
cut into bite-size pieces. Add to stew. Add salt, pepper, cayenne,
ginger, Worcestershire sauce. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently,
one hour. Add one-half cup sherry. 4. When ready to serve, add
one tablespoon sherry to each of six heated soup bowls. Ladle soup over
and garnish each serving with a tablespoon of whipped cream sprinkled
with paprika and parsley.
Grits Soufflé
2 cups milk 4 cups grits, cooked according to package direction and cooled to room temperature Salt to taste 8 eggs, separated
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 2. Bring the milk just to a boil and stir into grits. Add salt. Beat egg yolks and stir into grits mixture. 3.
Whip the whites until stiff and fold into mixture. Butter a two-quart
baking dish that is not more than six inches high, and pour mixture into
it. Set the dish in a pan of hot water and bake 45 minutes to an hour.
Serve immediately. The search for an answer to the grammar mystery and a Cajun grits recipe will be coming soon. In the meantime, we will raise our grits to America on its 2009 Birthday in the next post.
. . .Continued from Part I, June 14, and Part II, June 29. Those
posts can be accessed by clicking on “Grits” in the right column.
Still Tied
The tally on whether gritsis or are is even. So, let’s keep going. First, the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, 29th edition, The Associated Press press, 1994: I’m quoting. “WORDS PLURAL IN FORM, SINGULAR IN MEANING: Some take singular verbs: measles, mumps, news. Others take plural verbs: grits, scissors. Score one more for are. Second, The Chicago Manual of Style (14th edition) tells you to look it up in the dictionary. Well, o.k., cowards.
Dictionaries
Let’s start with Webster’s New World Dictionary for Young Readers, 1976. Grits is starred as being an American English word meaning “coarsely ground wheat or corn.” They tag it plural.
One more for are.
Then there’s The American Heritage dic tion ar y of the English Language, 4th edition, 2000: Grits (grits) pl.n. (used with a singular or plural verb)
One more for are and one more for is.
Grammar Books
We’ll start with a really EARLY one: English Grammar, G.P. Quackenbos (I am not making this up), New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1871. The
Preface by the author is dated 1862, almost 10 years before
publication. I guess the Civil War delayed publication or Quakenbos
didn’t want to give the South any free PR:
In offering the present Grammar to the public, the author [never refer to yourself personally was a rule much in vogue in 1871] begs leave to refer to the work itself [his own book] as the best exponent of those peculiarities [his own views of grammar, as stated in the previous paragraph] by which it [this book] is to be approved or condemned. . . .
Oh BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, boring. I’ll put the rest in a footnote.
So, all that said, let’s see what Quackenbos says about grits. On page 43 of the yellowed, fragile pages, he says:
91. Singular Nouns. – The following nouns have no plural: -- 3. The names of many articles sold by weight or measure; as, flax, lard, lead, cider, milk, pitch, rye.”
While he does NOT specifically cite grits,
we in the South know grits were sold by weight or measure; he was from
and lived in New York before the Civil War. If he didn’t even know grits
existed, how could he have included them in his list?
Then he lists plural nouns that have no singular. Again, grits is/are not on his list, but greens are. So, what can we conclude? Oh, hell, nothing. But for fun, we’ll give is a vote.
Finally,
I turned to a grammar book that was revised in 1952 by Dr. James B.
McMillan, who was my graduate school linguistics professor at The
University of Alabama. The UA Press's building is named for Dr. McMillan. If anyone knew, he knew. It’s Writing and Thinking, published by The Riverside Press in Cambridge. I call that credible.
In the section about subject/verb agreement, p. 111, McMillan says:
Use a singular verb with most nouns which are plural in form but singular in meaning. Note: Many nouns with a plural form may be either singular or plural in meaning. Almost always singular: economics, . . . mathematics, . . .measles, mumps, news. . . .
No grits. But, in contradiction to The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, if grits is like news, it’s singular. One more for is.
Is is up by one, I think. Like, who cares. This calls for a recipe. Cajun Grits
Talk About Good!: Le Livre de la Cuisine de Lafayette (25th
Anniversary edition. Junior League of LaFayette 1992), like many Junior
League cookbooks from across America, is an all-around good cookbook
and has plenty of grits and hominy recipes for future posts. Here’s one:
Grits Bread (p. 118)
3 c. cooked grits 4 beaten eggs
1 c. uncooked corn meal milk as needed 1 Tbsp. baking powder 1 stick butter [Remember this ingredient.] salt to taste cooked sausage or bacon Mix
cooked grits, corn meal, baking powder, salt and eggs together. Add a
small amount of milk, only enough for mixture to be a thick consistency.
Cover bottom of baking pan with cooking oil, add mixture. Top with
margarine [butter?] and sausage or bacon. Cook one hour at 400 degrees. Mrs. Richard Williams
Remember the butter?
The recipe says to cover the bottom of the baking pan with oil; then it
says to top with margarine Where does 1 stick of butter go? One stick
is a lot. So here’s my suggestion. Drop the oil and margarine. Use some
of the butter for the bottom of the baking pan; then top the bread with
butter; then butter the bread for toast with butter. Have we about used
it all up? Now it doesn’t make a damn whether grits IS or ARE. Eat ‘em and the war’s over.
FOOTNOTE: The Quackenbos book. Warning: It’s boring.
“Grammar has hitherto been a dry and hard subject to teach [as is this man’s writing]. It is here sought to make it [grammar]
easy and interesting by combining practice with theory, example with
precept, on a more liberal scale than has heretofore generally been
done. . . .[Now I’m really eager to dig into the book’s details.] Words are classified as parts of speech solely and exclusively according to their use in the sentence. This course does away with all arbitrary distinctions, and enables the pupil to classify words readily and correctly for himself.” [The italics are Quackenbos’s, not mine-o’s.]
If
the members or parts of a compound subject are considered one item, one unit or
one substance, use a singular verb.
The
sense of a compound subject with the connective and is singular, and the writer
may use a singular verb.
The
hammer and sickle was flying from the flagpole.
Bacon
and eggs is a favorite American breakfast.
A
trip to Bermuda and a thousand dollars was the first prize in the beauty
contest.
Bread
and butter makes a tasty snack.
The
satisfaction and enjoyment of the work was ample reward for the effort.
Vinegar
and oil is a popular salad dressing.
Liver
and onions is a meal people either love or hate. (They are not served and eaten
separately.)
Grits
and sausage is a dish I associate with my college roommate.
Southern Grammar: Grits
A debate has raged–yes, raged–on my husband’s side of the family for
years. Each time we sit down to breakfast, there is a debate about the
word “grits.”
My father-in-law says, “This grits is good.”
My mother-in-law says, “These grits are good.”
Then, they ask me to settle the dispute since I worked as an editor.
Aside from the fact that they are asking me to get in the middle of
their argument, there’s one other problem. I have Northern parents. We
didn’t eat grits. I don’t like grits.
To me, grits is/are gross.
Long story short: I didn’t know, so I looked it up.
Choose the correct verb tense: Grits is/are good. Singular or plural?
The answer is BOTH.
Grits can be used with either a singular or plural verb!
Want proof? Here’s a screen shot from Merriam-Webster.com:
