Katrina in Williamsburg, Virginia, asks if it’s pretentious to use the word said to describe something previously referred to. Using said to mean the aforesaid or the aforementioned is far more common in legal documents, but there’s nothing inherently incorrect about using it in other contexts, or using it in an ironic or jocular way in social media. In fact, speakers of English have been using said this way for more than 700 years. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Aforementioned “Said””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Katrina calling from Williamsburg, Virginia.
Hi, Katrina. Welcome.
What can we do for you?
I am calling to find out if using said to describe something that was previously spoken about is proper.
For instance, if I told you I was going to the farmer’s market to buy vegetables, I could send you a picture of the vegetables with the caption, said vegetables. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Said vegetables.
You said in this way to refer to, like you said, something that was spoken about in the past. Is this a construction that you’re likely to use?
Well, I’m kind of new to social media and I see it everywhere. Like my sister posts stuff or I’ll send stuff to her about things that we’ve, you know, pictures or something that we’ve spoken about before. And she’ll say said vegetables. But I don’t want to do it and sound crazy. So I was just calling to find out, can I use it or is it just something that’s like occurring right now?
Well, it’s certainly a legitimate usage. The usage of said to mean the aforementioned thing or the aforesaid thing goes back about 700 years in English.
Wow.
It’s really, really, really old. I’m not really aware of it being used in terms of something casual like that, though.
Yeah, it’s usually more formal. You definitely will see it in legal documents, particularly when there’s a discourse or discussion where, you know, somebody was mentioned in a previous part of the legal document. The other part of it is I could see somebody doing it ironically, and certainly the Internet abounds in people doing things ironically that we wouldn’t otherwise do.
Right.
Yeah, that was my sense of it. I mean, are you trying to be funny when you do it?
I don’t know. It’s kind of just like a way to describe, like instead of saying these are the vegetables I told you about earlier, you could just say said vegetables. So I didn’t know if it was proper to use it that way.
I like it. It sounds ironic.
Yeah, it sounds like it’s a tone mismatch is what it is. And that’s a little bit of comedy that we often throw into language where in an informal situation, we use formal speech. And we all kind of get a little, I don’t know, a hormone jolt or something because we realize that there’s a match. It makes sense, but the match isn’t there.
Right. Okay.
So I wouldn’t feel bad about it. In fact, I think it’s pretty clever.
Yeah.
Okay.
I love the fact that you’re new to social media and you’re like, whoa, what are these people doing here? I was like, can you do that? I don’t know if you can do that.
Yes.
Martha and Grant say you can.
Yeah.
And you need to put an asterisk on every post that says that.
That’s right.
Proved by MBGB.
That’s right.
I’m Grant and Martha, and we approve this message.
Katrina, thanks for your call. Really appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
All right, bye-bye.
Have a great day.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
So it’s a synonym for the aforementioned. And sometimes it takes the article the, and sometimes it doesn’t. Here are the said vegetables. Or you might also say, here are said vegetables.
I love that it’s just vegetables. That’s our example, is vegetables.
Okay.
Homemade soap. Said homemade soap. The 1300s. We have it in archaic forms of English from the 1300s. That’s interesting.
Yeah, I love that she’s reviving it in social media.
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