Popular Science is not a magazine where one would expect to find an article on language usage, especially if the subject is not even scientific language. Yet the fall issue has a page dedicated to the word whom.
The two most interesting points are these.
1. A study found that men who use whom in their profiles on dating sites get 31% more messages in reply. It doesn’t explain why, so we can only guess. Perhaps the word suggests a man is more educated, more refined and more prosperous, whether or not that word is actually used correctly.
2. There has been a steady decline in the use of whom in literature since 1800, and literature is produced by people who actually are educated and refined (if rarely prosperous). In 1800 .050 percent of words in literature written in English were whom. Today it’s only about .010 percent.
This decline in usage among those who know the language best is echoed among the rest of us. We rarely if ever say or write the word whom. We seem a bit hoity-toity when we do. Most of us don’t even remember why we were supposed to use the word or when.
I am old enough to remember when Johnny Carson hosted a daytime television game show called “Who Do You Trust?” There were protests from grammarians that it should properly be called “Whom Do You Trust?” Today I doubt anyone would complain.
Whom isn’t quite an obsolete word yet, but it gets little attention anymore. Except, apparently, from women looking for date.
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