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Re: The new way to grow (WAS The new way to office)
Subject:Re: The new way to grow (WAS The new way to office) From:Tom Tadfor Little <tlittle -at- LANL -dot- GOV> Date:Wed, 14 Feb 1996 13:57:29 -0700
Al writes
|Hey folks, grow up! The dictionary lists grow
|as an intransitive AND a transitive verb, i.e. to cause
|to grow. You've seen/read/heard it used this way
|before with more familiar direct objects, you all
|appear just to dislike the already very widespread usage
|of "growing a business [or the economy or whatever]"
|'cuz it's perhaps inelegant, i.e. less familiar.
The meaning is somewhat different. Growing radishes
means to raise them, not to cause them to expand.
The "grow the business" usage is not an extension of
the normal transitive use of "grow"; rather it is an
idiosyncratic alteration of the intransitive idiom.
Obviously, if the expression becomes standard it won't
matter where it came from. But currently, if you're the
type of writer or editor who prefers to cut MBA jargon
out of your prose, "grow the business" is a fine
candidate for pruning.
Tom Tadfor Little tlittle -at- lanl -dot- gov -or- telp -at- Rt66 -dot- com
technical writer/editor Los Alamos National Laboratory
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