Scratching an Itch

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello there.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Robin Blight.

Hi, Robin, where are you calling from?

Paris from Virginia.

Oh, welcome to the show.

I’ve got a serious, serious problem that y’all need to help me out on with this.

Okay.

Let me tell you what is on the line with this.

If I lose, I have to watch Chick-fil-A for like a weekend.

Oh, man.

-huh.

And she wants to go to one of these Chick-fil-A movies.

Because if I win, we get to watch, like, Transformer 3D and so on and so forth.

Outstanding.

I’m not a chick flick kind of guy.

I’m in touch with my femininity, but I’m not a chick flick kind of guy.

Okay, yeah.

So what do you think of Love Actually?

That’s probably what I’m going to end up having to watch, something like that.

Oh, bless your heart.

What’s the question?

This sounds serious.

It is serious.

Yeah.

And it gives Transformers 3D, you know.

Okay, here’s what’s happening.

Gosh, eight, ten years ago, my wife and I were sitting on the sofa, and I’m like, Amy, will you scratch my back?

She said, you don’t scratch your back, you itch your back.

I was like, no, you scratch my back.

She says, no, you itch it, you have a scratch in your hand.

So I started, like, looking and to really get down to the bottom of it.

I’ve looked it up, whether it’s be a verb transitive, blah, blah, blah.

Barely no English myself, so I needed a professional opinion on it.

All right, let’s break this down.

Let me just recap this.

Oh, boy.

You believe that you can scratch an itch, and she believes that you can’t scratch an itch.

She has a problem with that verb.

Right.

Oh, interesting.

Wow.

This is kind of the opposite of what I would have expected, really.

Why?

Well, usually the complainer is the one who thinks that itch your back is wrong.

Oh, that’s true.

That’s true, yeah.

And that’s the thing that’s interesting about this dude.

It’s like usually itch, to itch someone’s back is considered very nonstandard and highly informal.

And not the kind of language that, you know, people will call you on it sometimes.

So it’s interesting that she should be a proponent of the particular construction that lots of other people have a problem with.

Lots of people.

And lots of books, actually, style guides and reference manuals and things like that.

Now, she’s not completely wrong because it’s perfectly grammatical.

It’s just marked as being informal.

Everyone kind of recognizes that’s not usually the way that we do that.

And you scratch an itch.

That’s more properly put.

So you’re saying that if I’m walking down Metro and I see somebody, I say, would you scratch my back because I’ve got an itch going?

But if my wife, I say, well, you itch my back because my wife and I are informal, but meeting a stranger to do your back is pretty formal, right?

How often do you ask strangers to relieve your itch?

Yeah, that’s a really good question.

I look like one of those cows in the field rubbing against one of those fence posts trying to itch my back sometimes.

I’m trying to scratch my face sometimes.

I know that.

She’s influenced you.

I can tell.

The oily burlap sack on the barbed wire.

I know that very much.

Exactly.

I’m not quite that big, but I’m a big boy.

So, you know, are they both right?

They’re both correct.

Let’s put it this way.

First, they’re both grammatical English.

But we have something else to consider, and this is the word that linguists use, the pragmatics of it.

And the pragmatics of it is that scratch and itch is far more accepted than to itch a scratch.

Okay.

So that’s the problem with this.

Technically, you’re both correct.

So what I’m going to do is suggest that you find a movie compromise.

Did you see the movie with Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise, which was kind of like Groundhog Day with robots?

No, I didn’t.

I recommend that one.

Just look it up.

Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise.

It’s kind of, it’s really action-y, but they fall in love.

So maybe you’ll both be happy.

Okay.

I’m looking at IMBD.

Fall in love.

Yeah.

So they wear, like, they fight wars against alien creatures, but they fall in love.

Oh, that’s not bad.

Maybe there’s a couple.

Because I think you both have a case, but you actually have a little more of a case.

Yeah, I’d say two Transformers movies and one Jerry Maguire.

Bing, baby.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Okay.

All right.

That’s really good, then.

All right, man.

Thank you so much for my question.

Our pleasure.

Let us know how it turns out, all right?

Thanks a lot.

You guys will be good.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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