Arcana

It's always a question when to drop one's objection to a particular "error" of grammar or usage. Should it be when the last living defender of the point is dead? Or does there simply come a time when a distinction has so thoroughly broken down that only one person in a thousand knows or cares?

I encountered such a point this week, in this sentence: "When you first view this feature, you may be dubious about its value."

A distant bell rang. There's a difference, isn't there, between being dubious and being doubtful? A recent (and excellent) authority, Bryan Garner, comments that although "dubious" in this context "has occasionally been criticized, it is now in good use."

So why does it still bother me, faintly? Wilson Follett, an older grammarian whom I admire just this side idolatry, comments of "dubious": "This is an adjective the dictionaries generally fail to make clear. It springs, of course, from doubt, but in what direction does it point? When the word is used with discrimination, the doubt is elsewhere than in the person or thing described as dubious. This person or thing is the object of doubt by another or others, not the author or abode of doubt."

Ah, let me pause a moment to revel in that "abode of doubt"!

Okay, I'm back. This would mean that in my writer's sentence, it's not the viewer who is dubious, but the "feature." The viewer is "doubtful." In this instance, there seems no chance that "dubious" would be misread. But what about: "Dubious readers may raise a question about this feature"? Here it really does sound as if the readers are the cause of the doubt, not its "abode." So maybe there's a distinction here that's worth keeping for a while.

When in doubt (or maybe dubious) about a usage, I sometimes resort to a wonderful book titled English Synonymes Explained in Alphabetical Order, by George Crabb, A.M. My copy was published in 1885. Crabb seems to make little if any distinction between doubtful and dubious, but he expounds at length on the relation of those words to uncertain and precarious. His essay is too delicious not to repeat, almost in its entirety:

"Doubtful and dubious have always a relation to the person forming the opinion on the subject in question; UNCERTAIN and PRECARIOUS are epithets which designate the qualities of the things themselves. Whatever is uncertain may from that very circumstance be doubtful or dubious to those who attempt to determine upon them; but they may be designated for their uncertainty without any regard to the opinions which they may give rise to. A person's coming may be doubtful or uncertain; the length of his stay is oftener described as uncertain than as doubtful. The doubtful is opposed to that on which we form a positive conclusion, the uncertain to that which is definite or prescribed. The efficacy of any medicine is doubtful; the manner of its operation may be uncertain. While our knowledge is limited, we must expect to meet with many things that are doubtful; as everything in the world is expected to change, and all that is future is entirely above our control, we must naturally expect to find everything uncertain but what we see passing before us."

Crabb adds that "precarious is the highest species of uncertainty, applied to such things as depend on future casualties [my note: could this possibly be a misprint for "causalities"? Is it possible for Crabb to err?] in opposition to that which is fixed and determined by design. The weather is uncertain; the subsistence of a person who has no stated income or source of living must be precarious. It is uncertain what day a thing may take place, until it is determined. There is nothing more precarious than what depends upon the favor of princes."

Are we all clear on this, class? Good, because I'm going to bed.