If You “Can’t Do Z, Let Alone Y,” Are You More or Less Able to Do Y?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, guys.

This is Stacey from Denver, Colorado.

Hey, Stacey.

Welcome to the show.

I had a question for you guys about a phrase that I’m hoping you can help sort of settle for me.

The phrase is let alone.

And the way I would use it is to compare two things.

So, for example, if you ask me to cook a Thanksgiving dinner and I’m a terrible cook, then I would say, oh, I can’t even cook for myself, let alone cook Thanksgiving for 10 people.

So I would compare, like, what you’re asking with something that’s even less than that and say, I can’t even do this, so forget about this other thing.

And I would put the more extreme thing at the end.

Right.

So that’s how I always heard it used, and that’s what makes sense to me.

But I feel like lately in the last probably two or three years, I’ve been hearing a lot of people using it the other way around, where they’ll put the thing in question at the beginning and then the lesser thing at the end.

So they’ll say like, oh, I can’t cook Thanksgiving, let alone cook for myself.

To me, this just sounds so wrong.

This is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Like it just feels totally backwards.

I’m hoping that you can just settle this for me officially.

Yes, we can provide you some relief.

Dr. Martha, we can help her, right?

Yes, and we have some great magazines while you’re waiting.

Wonderful.

Yeah, I think you really nailed it exactly right.

Traditionally, the harder things should come last.

In your version you said that I can’t do x which is an easy thing and let alone y which is a harder thing and that’s that’s pretty much how it it has been and ought to be and you’re right people do often put the difficult thing first they say I can’t even z let alone x but what they should be saying is not even x.

So kind of what they’re mixing here is these little idiomatic expressions, all which are used to provide this range of possibilities of what they are or are not capable of doing.

And let alone, let’s admit it, is kind of a weird expression, right? Let alone is not, it’s idiomatic.

It’s hard to break down.

What does let alone mean? It’s not really a modern phrase at all, right?

So it’s kind of opaque when you hear it being used.

It’s pretty easy to misunderstand it.

Yeah. Right? True.

That’s true. But there are different phrases like that.

Yeah. It’s the same kind of construction to say nothing of, you know.

Or never mind or much less or still less.

Yeah. Yeah.

And all of these can be used in the same way or they can be misused in the same way so it’s kind of an understandable mistake particularly with let alone especially with let alone because let alone is just this odd little bird if you saw this and you had your photo your camera you would you’d take a picture of it because it’d be the strange you know all the little brown birds and this brightly colored one you know look at this little let alone over here.

Yeah look at this little let alone and you’d be showing to all your bird or friends.

So I think you really nailed it.

And I think it’s a forgivable mistake, but it is an error.

You’re not the only person who’s noticed this.

Linguists have been researching complementary alternation discourse constructions.

That’s what they’re called.

That’s what they’re called.

Yeah.

And we’ll link to some very highfalutin academic papers when we post this to the website.

They’re pretty heady stuff.

Yeah, when I said there were magazines in our waiting room, these are not those.

These are the ones.

No pictures.

These are the things we give you when you haven’t been following the diet we give you or taking the pills like we recommend.

I would expect no less.

We’ll link to them anyway because you might find some benefit.

So just to be clear, since we said so much, let’s make sure we talk about this one last time.

It should be I can’t even toast bread, let alone cook Thanksgiving for 10 people.

So it’s the easy thing first and the hard thing second.

Yes.

Right.

Gotcha.

Perfect.

Well, Stacey, thank you so much for calling.

I’m glad you feel better.

I do.

Thank you for the medicine.

It’s definitely cleared up my case.

Come and see us in six weeks.

We’ll take the cast off.

Okay.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Happy holidays to you guys.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, Stacey.

Bye.

Well, if there’s a word or phrase you’re wondering about, give us a call.

877-929-9673 or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.