Wakeful Worries — Blog 1

This is likely the first in a series of who knows how many posts. I named it “Wakeful Worries” because it will focus on the linguistic questions that keep this grammarian* up at night.

Around 2:00 a.m. I was thinking about the punchline to a joke my spouse likes to tell. For the joke to work, the jokester asks the mark something like:

”That’ll need a henway. Could you go get me one?”

The ask is designed to inspire the mark to respond: “What’s a henway?”

Answer: “About 4 or 5 pounds.”

Obviously, a henway is a made-up object created by fusing hen and weigh. Other versions of this joke use hammerfore, or updoc. But what caught me last night is that the henway version relies on the ability to misinterpret the mark’s words because of the dual meaning of a verbal contraction that I rarely see in print.

The mark is using “what’s” to mean “what is” as in “What is a henway?” while the jokester is relying on the fact that “what’s” in this context can be understood to mean “what does.” We use “what’s” as a contraction of what does all the time: “What’s that mean?” “What’s she want to do?” But the more I thought about it, the more I began to conclude that this is purely a verbal contraction—not one we use in writing.

Setting aside that contractions are generally only used in informal writing to begin with, I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen “what’s” used to mean “what does” written anywhere except dialogue in books. Similarly, in the first person context, we often verbally omit the “d” in “what do you” to the point we have essentially created the new word “whatta” or “whadda” as in: “Whatta ya want?!”

So, now I’m curious. Have you ever seen “what’s” used to mean “what does” in print? Let me know in the comments.

*I dithered about whether to qualify calling myself an “amateur” grammarian because, although I consider myself something of a grammar snoot, I know that there are many grammarians more knowledgeable than I. However, I felt that “amateur” was Inaccurate because I do a considerable amount of writing and editing in my paying profession so that I am, to one degree or another, a professional grammarian. This, I elected to leave it qualified with only the asterisk so I could then qualify it with a small paragraph instead of one word. Bryan Garner is ready to revoke my grammar snoot ID card as I type. Ah well. C’est la vie!