My friend Graham reached middle age without professing more than a passing interest in football, but became a reluctant supporter after marrying a woman with a burning passion for the game.
One word nearly sent him back to that earlier state of blissful unconcern. After offering some thoughts on crowd behaviour to a magazine, he was horrified to see his remarks paraphrased so that he appeared to describe himself as an "attendee".
Graham, pernickety in his choice of language, would no more use "attendee" than enter a cage for unarmed combat with a hungry lion. It is some time since we met, but he came instantly to mind as I read an interview with Karen Gillan, an actress with a leading role in the new series of the internationally popular British television series Doctor Who.
What possible offence could Miss Gillan have caused her interviewer, from the British Sunday newspaper The Observer to find herself referred to as an "auditionee" for the part?
Attendee may be bad enough; I can think of only one -ee construction as ugly as auditionee. I will never forget the bus journey on which I first encountered the sign: "Standees are not allowed beyond this point."
There is, of course, a distinction. The man from The Observer could point out that he was using -ee to form the direct object of the verb, something that attracts no complaint when we hear about interviewees, trainees and employees.
He may even accept that attendee and standee are simply wrong, yet unashamedly defend his attachment to auditionee.
It seemed a good idea to turn to Fowler's Modern English Usage, not because Henry Watson Fowler and I always agree but because his arguments are so often presented entertainingly and with elegance.
Mr Fowler noted several -ee formations in legal terminology. Persons to whom something is let, sold, entrusted or referred become lessees, vendees, trustees and referees, all examples of the indirect object.
Mr Fowler allows the legalistic usage to pass without criticism before moving on to such "agent-nouns" as refugees, debauchees and absentees. These are of French origin, deriving from reflexive nouns where the objects and subjects are the same. They represent what Mr Fowler calls a "modern tendency", which means he disapproves: "We already have at least three suffixes for that purpose (-er, -or and -ist) and to use one whose natural meaning is the opposite is gratuitously confusing. The unskilled workers used to 'dilute' skilled workers in time of war should have been called diluters instead of dilutees; the skilled were the dilutees."
I use the present tense, but it is worth remembering that Mr Fowler was writing more than a century ago; the continuing battles we have on linguistic issues vindicate another product of France, the phrase plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same).
But no debate is required to see that if we take Mr Fowler as the authority, the person standing on a bus cannot possible be a standee, and the man at the football match is not an attendee. It is correct, however, to give Miss Gillan the ungainly status of a former auditionee.
I began with the single word that tested Graham's new-found interest in football, and shall end with the series of words that threatened to kill it off. Watching his wife's team leave the field 4-0 down at half-time, he idly imagined himself at the interval of a more genteel performance, the opera or a play perhaps, and began to applaud.
The man behind exploded. "I've just spent half a week's wages travelling to the other end of the country to watch that heap of rubbish - and you sit there applauding," he exclaimed. Even with the expletives deleted, it is easy to imagine what the rebuke must have felt like in Graham's ears.
Colin Randall is a contributing editor to The National and can be contacted at crandall@thenational.ae
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,000
On sale: Available for preorder now
TO A LAND UNKNOWN
Director: Mahdi Fleifel
Starring: Mahmoud Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Mohammad Alsurafa
Rating: 4.5/5
What are the GCSE grade equivalents?
- Grade 9 = above an A*
- Grade 8 = between grades A* and A
- Grade 7 = grade A
- Grade 6 = just above a grade B
- Grade 5 = between grades B and C
- Grade 4 = grade C
- Grade 3 = between grades D and E
- Grade 2 = between grades E and F
- Grade 1 = between grades F and G
The specs
Engine: 1.4-litre 4-cylinder turbo
Power: 180hp at 5,500rpm
Torque: 250Nm at 3,00rpm
Transmission: 5-speed sequential auto
Price: From Dh139,995
On sale: now
Company%20profile
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Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
Director: Laxman Utekar
Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna
Rating: 1/5
WIDE%20VIEW
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NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Company%20Profile
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SPECS%3A%20Polestar%203
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England World Cup squad
Eoin Morgan (capt), Moeen Ali, Jofra Archer, Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler (wkt), Tom Curran, Liam Dawson, Liam Plunkett, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Jason Roy, Ben Stokes, James Vince, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
UAE%20medallists%20at%20Asian%20Games%202023
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Earth under attack: Cosmic impacts throughout history
- 4.5 billion years ago: Mars-sized object smashes into the newly-formed Earth, creating debris that coalesces to form the Moon
- 66 million years ago: 10km-wide asteroid crashes into the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out over 70 per cent of living species – including the dinosaurs.
- 50,000 years ago: 50m-wide iron meteor crashes in Arizona with the violence of 10 megatonne hydrogen bomb, creating the famous 1.2km-wide Barringer Crater
- 1490: Meteor storm over Shansi Province, north-east China when large stones “fell like rain”, reportedly leading to thousands of deaths.
- 1908: 100-metre meteor from the Taurid Complex explodes near the Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs, devastating 2,000 square kilometres of forest.
- 1998: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaks apart and crashes into Jupiter in series of impacts that would have annihilated life on Earth.
-2013: 10,000-tonne meteor burns up over the southern Urals region of Russia, releasing a pressure blast and flash that left over 1600 people injured.
