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"Jive" for "Jibe"

slingblade said:
BowlOfRed said:
But I'm sure I could care less. Things like this come down the pipe all the time.
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Come down the pike (American):
to happen or appear

Usage notes: Pike is short for 'turnpike' in American English and means a large, main road.
Malnourished children are liable to catch any disease that comes down the pike.


The use of "pipe" appears to be drift. "Turnpike," and thus "pike," don't appear to be in common usage as they once were.
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Yes it is. I think my attempt at humor (by putting two "drifted" statements together) wasn't necessarily obvious. I was hoping to avoid needing a smiley.

:)
 
LondonJohn said:
By the way (and slightly unrelated), can any US native tell me what rough proportion of US speakers pronounce the word "route" to rhyme with "doubt", as opposed to rhyming with "boot"?
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My sense is that "root" is a smaller percentage of the noun form (but was greater in the past), and that "rout" is a higher percentage of the noun and virtually always used in any other form (routing, router...)

I was at a technical conference (on Cayman GatorBoxes for those that remember them) and heard an Australian gentleman discuss his "rooters". That took me several seconds to parse.

I frequently hear both pronunciations by US-English speakers, whereas in UK-English, it always rhymes with "boot" (as also befits its romance/French etymology). Is the "doubt/boot" pronunciation split on demographic lines, or geographic lines, or neither? I'm intrigued!
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I found this, but have no idea about the accuracy. http://dialect.redlog.net/staticmaps/q_26.html
I'm sure there are a large number of things that my brain simply does not "hear", so I don't notice and can't be accurate about. rout/root for the noun is probably one of them. I think I would find "rooting" jarring and would notice. I think it is even less common than the graphic shows.

I wonder if "routing" (which has no 'e') was the first to shift, and then the pronunciation for "route" has tended to follow?

In Oklahoma, my mailing address was "rout" one, never "root" one.
 
slingblade said:
I get my kicks on Roote 66, but my computer's rauhter and the rauhter in my hubby's imaginary workshop rhyme.
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sling cites the only example I know of where "root" is used - that is, when referring to Route 66. All other situations call for the "doubt" variation. Maybe that specialized usage comes from the song about Route 66 but then I don't know where that pronunciation comes from.
 
bigred said:
In fact, if you do a search on this site about grammatical pet peeves, you'll mind many which are nauseatingly common here.
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Was that on purpose or an accidental typo for "find". If the latter, it is a damn funny typo given the topic of this thread.
 
Guybrush Threepwood said:
Um, yes. That definiton is circular, it uses jibe with in the example, so clearly jibe in that sentence means agree.
The OED gives jibe as a US variant of gybe, which is from the 17thC so unless jibe with predates that, the agree meaning has developed over time, from the phrase, not the other way around, and I still can't see an obvious way it did that.
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um don't look now but you're agreeing with me and disagreeing with your post I referenced, ie jibe is correct, not jive.

SezMe said:
Was that on purpose or an accidental typo for "find". If the latter, it is a damn funny typo given the topic of this thread.
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It was a typo, lol
 
In answer to the OP, which I neglected in my earlier posts, I have heard people say "jive" rather than "jibe." In fact, it seems that when I hear it, most times it is "jive" that I hear. I don't normally use that idiom, but I think if I had in the past, I would probably have said "jive" myself. :o

Now, however, I am completely reformed. I am a "jibe" man through and through. :D
 
bigred said:
um don't look now but you're agreeing with me and disagreeing with your post I referenced, ie jibe is correct, not jive.
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No, I'm not. Just in case I wasn't clear my position is that jibe is the older usage, but someone hearing the phrase for the first time could more easily rationalise jive as the word, since jibe is not used these days except in this phrase (or with it's other meaning of insult, which really doesn't fit).

As for which is correct, whichever more people use of course, what other answer is there?
 
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SezMe said:
I've never heard "sexy" but how is the upsidedown "e" pronounced? I've heard ONLY "scuzzy".
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It's a schwa. Scuzzy is a close approximation, but I've never heard anyone distinctly pronounce the U. Probably half of vowels in spoken language are spoken as a schwa in reality. To take an example, nobody pronounces the E in 'spoken' as an actual E.
 
To the OP, I have heard people use "jive" instead of "jibe." I suspect the reason for this is simply that "jibe" is unfamiliar to many people. Before reading this thread, I thought I was the only person alive who did use "jibe."
 
I was asked to come back and supply a serious answer to the OP. I almost always hear people use "jive" instead of "jibe". Sometimes a speaker will almost intentionally blur the pronunciation.

This word will likely become one of those that winds up meaning something different than it used to. Language usage is not set in stone and it belongs to all of us and not just grammarians.
 
My thanks to those of you who are coming back to the thread to let recount your experiences and opinions on the jive/jibe question.

Stilicho, You may be right about the words eventually changing meaning. That is sub-optimal from my perspective, I guess. You are right that language is a changing thing though. No sense worrying about it too much.

There have been many examples given of different idioms being mis-stated in this thread. Some are more troubling than others.

I think it is less troublesome if a change comes that merely substitutes words without changing the meaning of those words. For example: 'comes down the pike/pipe.' Either word retains it's meaning. I pipe is still a pipe, a pike is still a pike. Things come down both of those objects. It is worse to me if the mistake actually forces a change of the meaning of a word.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Canis
 
Have just revisited this thread, after several days’ absence – can’t resist adding my two British pence. caniswalensis, sorry if what I contribute here, annoys...

“Expression drift” which forces changing of meaning of words, as opposed to otherwise – really not much of a problem for me – I being mostly of the wet-liberal “language is a democracy” persuasion.

In the rare instances of my using “ji*es with” (=agrees with, meshes-in with), I use “jibe”. On the rare occasions when I’ve encountered the expression from others “in real life”, I think “jibe” has been used, not “jive”. (I’m in the UK, for what that may be worth.) Have often seen, on the Internet in recent years, “jive” used in this context. As above – am personally a tolerance-merchant, inclined to feel, “I grok what people are trying to get at, what the heck...” Can see some of the point, of others with a more rigorous prescriptivist view...

Staying out of the “gybe” / nautical arena. Sailing / ship-handling stuff is total black magic, so far as I’m concerned.

The “could care less / couldn’t care less” thing. In my experience in the UK, “couldn’t care less” is invariably used here; other side of the Atlantic, it’s often “could care less”. Submitting a thought which I don’t think has hitherto come up on this thread (I may be wrong) – I can see logical justification for both forms of the expression. “I couldn’t care less”: there is no way I could be less interested than I am, in this stuff. “I could care less”: I suppose it’s JUST possible that I could have more-than-zero interest in this stuff, but don’t bet on it.

http://forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6 -- dedicated to the minutiae of English-language usage, and the analysing of same -- has a several-pages-long thread on “I couldn’t care less / I could care less”, with no firm verdict the one versus t’other, being arrived at – general feeling that “I could care less” is the less obviously sense-making, but “not totally” – and, making strict sense not necessarily be-all-and-end-all.
 
fleabeetle said:
Have just revisited this thread, after several days’ absence – can’t resist adding my two British pence. caniswalensis, sorry if what I contribute here, annoys...
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Not annoying at all. :) I very much appreciate you taking time to post your thoughts.

I hope I have not given anyone the impression that I lay awake nights worrying about expression drifts & the word jibe. I generally try not to correct people. I only do it if I think I can pull it off without embarrassing them. I do think such things are interesting to discuss & think about, but I have way to many issues with grammar & spelling to worry about other people’s foibles in that regard.

On the could/couldn’t care less issue, I believe I saw the move to ‘could’ actually begin to take root, in as much as it is possible for a single human to observe such a thing. I grew up in the 60’s & 70’s in mid-west America, and we always said ‘couldn’t’ This seemed universal to me until the late eighties, when I begin to observe people saying ‘could’. I first saw it on TV a couple times, and then amongst people I was acquainted with. I even said it myself sometimes. The thing is, I recall it being delivered with a very sarcastic tone of voice. That is the only way that it really works; if it is said ironically.

Eventually the ironic tone seemed to get lost. I remember the late, great Harlan Ellison delivering a scathing condemnation of the practice of saying ‘could care less’ a few years later. By that time it was common to hear 'could'.

I personally never say ‘could’ these days, just for sake of clarity.

Regards, Canis
 
Guybrush Threepwood said:
No, I'm not. Just in case I wasn't clear my position is that jibe is the older usage, but someone hearing the phrase for the first time could more easily rationalise jive as the word, since jibe is not used these days except in this phrase (or with it's other meaning of insult, which really doesn't fit).
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Being "older" isn't relevant since it's still commonly used; the rationalization above is an invalid one.

As for which is correct, whichever more people use of course, what other answer is there?
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The one which is commonly understood to be grammatically correct and which makes sense from a simple logic perspective. :cool:
 
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