Is “I Beg Your Pardon” Now Old-Fashioned?

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

My name is Keandra and I am calling from Delaware.

Oh, well, great to have you on the show.

What’s up, Keandra?

So I have a question about a phrase that my grandparents used and they have used it all of my life.

And I actually heard the phrase myself, a part of the phrase when I was living in France.

So I wanted to know just about the etymology, where it comes from.

My grandparents use it, and people kind of look at them a little bit strange because it’s so traditional, I think.

The expression is, I beg your pardon.

And how would they use it? Like, in what context?

So they use it, well, my grandmother, she’s the feisty of the two.

And she would use it if maybe she felt like she was being insulted or if someone was saying something that she didn’t quite particularly understand what they were saying.

And maybe she took it as an insult.

She’d say, you know, something like, I beg your pardon, you know.

And my grandfather, well, they both sort of use it also when they may not really know what’s being said.

Or let’s say they go to a restaurant and they look at something on the menu and the waiter might tell them what it is.

And they’re really not sure.

So they’ll say, I beg your pardon.

So I’ve heard them both use it in that regard.

And does that strike you as something that’s overly formal?

It is very formal, and my grandparents are both very traditional and, you know, very formal.

They both were born around the 40s.

So, yes, they are very traditional, very sort of prim and proper, and they use this expression all the time.

We can kind of zero in on some of this.

I think, although you asked for the etymology and the history of it, I think we should go with this, where it’s talking about the levels of formality that we give and have when we try to be polite.

The history of this term, to beg your pardon, or beg leave, or to beg excuse, dates from about the 1600s.

Pardon itself, we do need to get from French, so good look out there, and Latin before that.

And we can have beg pardon as a noun, meaning an apology that also dates to the 1600s.

But one of the things that struck me here as you were explaining was how the informality of modern English kind of leaves some people who still have the old formality hanging.

That is, what was once normal is now not normal.

And so they sound a little out of step.

Yeah.

I wouldn’t say abnormal, but, you know, we have this informalization of language where everything, almost at every level, is less formal.

Yeah.

And it’s been a turn in English for at least 100 years in all parts of society and all parts of the English speaking world.

Part of it’s cultural, part of it’s social, part of it is just language change.

Democratization of all different parts of society also contribute.

And so Beg Your Pardon is a really great example of a phrase that’s going by the wayside because of that informalization of language.

Yeah, young people just, they have a blank look on their face, you know, when my grandparents use it.

Yeah.

So the individual meanings of the words in beg pardon or beg your pardon don’t really matter.

It’s just that overall tone of formality.

We do this a lot in language.

Greetings are like that and leave taking or the way that we sign emails.

All of this is expected of us, but the words themselves don’t matter so much.

Just as long as you do the formality, just as long as you do the politeness task.

Right.

You might say, how are you doing?

But you don’t really want a list of everything that’s going on with the person.

Well, I must agree with you guys there.

My grandparents are very polite, and they will be polite even when they are grimacing.

Thank you, Kendra, for your call.

We really appreciate it, and I always love when people share memories of their grandparents, and yours sound adorable.

Well, if I have any other phrases that they say that I can think of, I’ll give you guys a call back.

Oh, please do.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

We welcome it.

Take care.

Thanks so much.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, what’s the polite way that you start a phone call?

Let’s find out.

Call us, 877-929-9673.