As the year
end and new year approach, I thought it was a good time to discuss a
year-related word and deal with something that has bothered me for a long time.
The word: anniversary.
What bugs
me: the way too many people misuse it, as in “first-year anniversary,” or “ten-year
anniversary.”
It bothers
me because the word “year” in unnecessary in this usage. According to the Oxford
dictionary, “anniversary” means
“the yearly return of a date on which an event took place in a previous year.”
According
to some cursory and largely unnecessary research—all literate English speakers should
know this—it derives from two Latin words: “Annus” meaning “year” and “versus”
meaning “turned.” Thus, an anniversary is the turning of a year.
We can
speak (or write) correctly of the first, second, tenth or whateverth
anniversary of something. To write the “two-year anniversary” means “the two
year yearly return of the date.” It’s redundant.
Worse, I hear
this misuse from otherwise reputable and well-spoken sources, particularly on the
CBC radio. And you know what that could lead to: more and more people picking
up on that misuse. As English is a living language, common use becomes accepted
and adopted as correct.
Please,
join me in this effort: let’s say and write “first anniversary,” “tenth
anniversary” and so on, instead of “x-year anniversary”—or worse, “six-month
anniversary.”
If we don’t
make this effort, this incorrect use will become correct. And I’ll be left
irritated by something that used to be wrong, but is now right.
Don’t you
hate that?
Have a happy, health and prosperous new year.
