Hello, and welcome back!
Let’s dive right in and answer the riddle from my previous post. What word does sex, lunch, and murder have in common? I can’t think of a more appropriate word with which to begin our discussion: DO! That’s right. We DO lunch. Our crude acquaintances “DO” another person when they have sexual relations. Tony Soprano types “DO” someone” when they have absolutely the opposite of sex in mind. There are other ways that we “DO” another person: With those eyebrows of hers, she really DOES a great Groucho! That famous make-up artist said she’d DO me next. In addition, we DO dishes, laundry, and homework. We DO our hair. We DO windows (or we DO NOT, as is often the stated case). The miscreants among us DO time. We use the word to mark achievements (I DID five miles this morning) or lack thereof (Why are they DOING so poorly?) It is a great word for disavowing: I want nothing to DO with you! We had nothing to DO with that decision.
Well, I could go on, and I’m sure many of you are thinking of a zillion other ways to use the word, DO. While you’re on it, DON’T forget (see what I did there? Oh, and there?) about DO as an auxiliary (helping) verb. In English, we have only a handful of words that can be used as both main and auxiliary verbs. Certainly, BE is one of them: Mordecai is an excellent taxidermist/Mordecai is enjoying the amazing weather. Sometimes, HAVE works the same way: Esmerelda has sixteen adorable dachshunds/Esmerelda has always loved those wiener dogs.
But DO is unique. It’s such a self-important little word that it inserts itself in places just for fun. It tags along with most other verbs (exceptions: BE, CAN, WILL, MIGHT, and a few other words that function exclusively as little helpers) as in DO you want a pickle with that? (This is about wanting, not doing.) Or No, I DO not want a pickle. It moves in and makesitself comfortable when we want to make a statement into a question: They love 1980s teen movies, DON’T they? Or when we want to emphasize something: Oh, I DO love to eat snails, DON’T you?
Sometimes, that little bugger even double dips, putting itself into a sentence twice: DO you DO the tango? DO you DO windows? I most certainly DO not DO dishes.
It certainly shows up in its share of famous slogans and encouragements: Just DO it! We can DO it! Keep practicing; you can DO it! And on it goes
What an amazing word. It’s not surprising at all that we DO language, is it?
DOING LANGUAGE 