On the way out

Words come and go. New words enter the English language each year, while others are used less and less often until they finally fade from the language altogether.

Read Shakespeare or almost any literature from a century or more ago and you are likely to find head-scratching words. What does that word mean? Or when did it mean that and not this? Dictionaries describe certain words and certain meanings of words as archaic. These words were once important. Now they are ignored.

Anne Curzan

In her book Says Who?, linguist Anne Curzan predicts that whom is one of those words likely to disappear from the language. Already, in fact, its use is rare. When someone says something like, "Whom did you tell?" it raises eyebrows. It sounds snooty, even though it may be grammatically correct. Most of us would say, "Who did you ask?" and hardly anyone would look down on us.

Even Curzan herself admits that in informal writing and speaking, such as in email, she uses who even when sticklers for proper English usage would insist upon whom.

Even when who may be improper, at least according to our English teachers of old, it sounds proper to us. Whom, on the other hand, almost always sounds improper. Or it sounds too proper. It's not how real people talk or write.

For now, whom survives ... barely. In another 50 years or so, it may have become archaic.