Of whom are you bored with?

June 15, 2009 9:06 PM

PrepositionFilter: When did "bored with" become "bored of"?

I'm not being all kids/lawn prescriptivist; "of" and "with" are equally meaningful/meaningless. (Are prepositions equally slippery in other languages?)

Still, it would never occur to me (at my advanced age) to say anything other than "bored with" and thus far "bored with" is publishing industry standard. Yet "bored of" is all over the damn place on the intertubes, which is our future.

I'm just curious about when, where, and why the switch began. Details, please!

posted by dogrose to media & arts (23 comments total)

My understanding is that English has so many prepositions that stuff like this just happens.
posted by motorcycles are jets at 9:29 PM on June 15

A parody titled "Bored of the Rings" was published decades ago and the "of" sounded OK then.
posted by JimN2TAW at 9:32 PM on June 15

I don't think the question lies in the preposition; I think it's what "bored" means. I take bored with mean "tired" —not often, but often enough to make bored of = tired of, itself a colloquialism that has gained some traction.
posted by trotter at 9:36 PM on June 15

Related.
posted by rokusan at 9:37 PM on June 15

I think it's like saying you're tired of something, except instead of being tired of it, you're bored of it. "Of" is being substituted for a lot of words these days. How many times do you see "I should of gone" or comments of that nature?
posted by iconomy at 9:39 PM on June 15

"Should of" seems to be a different case, though, where people mistakenly hear "of" instead of the contraction. And they're idiots.
posted by Mikey-San at 10:06 PM on June 15 [9 favorites]

I think it is part analogy to other similar paradigms (could/should/would of/have, tired of, lots of, sick of), part phonological reduction, and part hypocorrection/hearer (mis)perception (and therefore becomes 'learned' as the common way to use the phrase, and propagated as such).
posted by iamkimiam at 10:11 PM on June 15

I wonder if it might be a regionalism that's spread? I first heard it in Western Mass in the late 80s/early 90s; I had never encountered it before. "Bored of" makes sense, I guess - when I hear someone say it, I'm not confused about what they mean - but I grew up on "bored with," so the "of" construction sounds wrong to me.
posted by rtha at 10:24 PM on June 15

I figure about fifteen years ago, when "bring" and "take" and "then" and "than" became interchangeable, "never mind" became one word, and the double "is" appeared ("The problem is is that...").
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:45 PM on June 15

The first attestation of bored listed in the OED is only from 1823, in Lord Byron's Don Juan: Society is now one polished horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

Both bored + of and bored + with are listed as standard/correct in the various (non-prescriptive) British-produced English-as-a-second-language textbooks I use everyday, though, and the almighty GoogleFight thinks it's a neck-and-neck thing, so I imagine that it isn't "new".
posted by mdonley at 1:04 AM on June 16

I've heard both my whole life, but "bored with" sounds wronger to me. I'm not going to make pronouncements about regionalisms vs. THE WAY IT USED TO BE THAT'S RIGHT GOLDARNIT.
posted by fleacircus at 2:12 AM on June 16

"Should of" seems to be a different case, though, where people mistakenly hear "of" instead of the contraction. And they're idiots.
posted by Mikey-San

I agree.

althought I think most of this is US american-isms. its the USA that seems to be destroying the English Language.

fleacircus what is GOLDARNIT?

I've never heard this term before - is it an in-joke? or something taken from Battlestar Gallactica? (Frak or frig or whatever it was?)
posted by mary8nne at 2:59 AM on June 16

I've heard "bored of" as the more common form my whole life (40 years, western US.) I always assumed "bored with" was a UK thing, although both versions sound natural to me now.
posted by mmoncur at 4:01 AM on June 16

fleacircus what is GOLDARNIT?

Cowboy-esque euphemistic cursing (based presumably on "Goddammit"). Think Yosemite Sam or old TV westerns.
posted by letourneau at 4:17 AM on June 16

I think it's part of the whole feelings based culture. For eaxmple, you would never say to someone 'your offensive' but you would say 'I feel offeneded'.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:22 AM on June 16

Bored of, I can at least cope with, even if it tends to get my hackles up slightly... But, as has been commented previously, should of is just a fucking abomination! The fact that people will even write it like that, apparently oblivious to the fact that it means nothing... Makes me furious!
posted by opsin at 6:31 AM on June 16 [1 favorite]

Another vote for "should of" being plain ridiculous. English isn't my first language, and the first few times I saw "should of" written somewhere online I seriously questioned whether or not my version was wrong, and that version was correct. Then I thought about it, realized that "should of" makes no logical or grammatical sense and decided that the internet was silly.

I only recall hearing "bored of" among my peers, and whenever I see "bored with" I tend to assume, probably erroneously, that the writer is either British or old-fashioned. To my (non-native) brain, "bored with" makes it sound like that you should be engaging in the state of boredom with someone or something else, whereas "bored of" seems to imply more "bored because of" or "bored from".
posted by Phire at 7:38 AM on June 16

"Bored of" sounds like "tired of," which is OK. On the other hand, to say "I'm bored with Jonathan" sounds like you and Jonathan are bored (of something!).

If I were to pick a preposition to pair with "bored" de novo, I would think "by" would be correct.
posted by explosion at 8:09 AM on June 16

Are we really going down this road, again?

Also, regarding "should of", shouldn't we be blaming the contracted form of "should have" for causing all the confusion (they do sound um, identical), and not assuming that an entire generation/population/class/group of people are ignorant, uneducated, or lazy? Same goes for these other 'mistakes', Ockham's razor-like.
posted by iamkimiam at 8:32 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]

Given the mechanics of what you're actually saying when you use the word "bored", it seems it really ought to be "bored by", since it is performing the act of boring you, just as if it were doing anything else to you,

...but I don't know if it's ever been prescribed that way.

"of" comes closer to the mark than "with", certainly (IMO), but usage often seems to gain more momentum if it's just a bit poetic, and almost any preposition is kinda bendy when it comes to implication.

A good illustration of that is actually outside of English, where, in Spanish, "por" means "for" or "by"-- or where "de" means "of" or "from". Same's true in English-- prepositions are always a little watery, and again-- common usage is an actual factor in shaping implications over time anyway.

Yes-- talking about translation is another whole discussion (and a really interesting one), (my thesis for that: "you have to understand/take on a completely different worldview in order to define a single word in another language-- and what you're aiming to 'define' rather than 'translate' because in reality, there is no such thing as 'translation' whatever"... I guess that's sort of a derail). but I am referring to implications that the words themselves have in that language.

other English examples:
"To hell with you."-- you're not actually talking about going with them, or sending anything with them for that matter-- you're just describing some figurative action that's taking them there.

"Okay by me."-- -- not meaning I penned the plan myself, just that I found it acceptable upon review.

It seems like just about any preposition can be flipped inside out/back again and sound comfortable. And there's also variable inclusions/exclusions, as in "coming for to carry me home," or "It prevents me (from) sleeping."

Debates over specific usage are interesting, because the "right" answers" are, well, increasingly blurry, and still more so with passing time or across regions.
posted by candyhammer at 9:41 AM on June 16

Great examples candyhammer!

There's an interesting discussion on/about/of prepositions, cognitive mapping and metaphor, and spatial perception towards the end of Steven Pinker's excellent book, "The stuff of thought."
posted by iamkimiam at 10:02 AM on June 16

nth'ing the hell out of the Pinker book-- good call!

also check out some of his discussions
(lengthy mp3's) here.
posted by candyhammer at 10:41 AM on June 16

From The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd ed., 1996, edited by R. W. Burchfield), p. 113:

The normal constructions are with with or with by: they were bored with being left alone in the country; he became bored with Patrick; they were bored by the party political broadcasts before the general election. A regrettable tendency has emerged in recent years, especially in non-standard English in Britain and abroad, to construe the verb with of. Examples: She would bore of the game quite suddenly—M. Bracewell, 1989 (UK); Oh, he's around, worst luck. I'm so bored of him. He's lost his virility—C. Phipps, 1989 (UK); Surely she must be bored of seeing this same setting all the time—M. Tlali, 1989 (SAfr.); I was conscious of all the problems . . . of getting bored of something the minute you get it—N. Fairburn, 1992 (Scottish); They [sc. children] use the preposition 'of' in an unorthodox way: 'I'm bored of this,' they say (taking the construction from 'tired of')—I. Opie, 1993.

Needless to say, I deplore Burchfield's prescriptivist slant ("a regrettable tendency"), but clearly it struck both him and Opie as recent in the mid-'90s. It is possible, of course, that they are wrong and that it was used earlier (regionally or in some other way beneath their radar screen), but actual evidence would be needed to refute the statement.

N.b.: The question is about "when, where, and why the switch began." It is not "say, how do you feel about non-standard constructions?" I'm already bored of flagging non-answers, so please save your usage-rage rants for the many MetaTalk threads available for that purpose.
posted by languagehat at 1:16 PM on June 16