With somewhat, it ought to read "somewhat an outsider." But it's ugly no matter what.

Kevin instincts point him in the right direction; "something" is correct.

More importantly, will Google destroy Tokyo?

The 'somewhat' in this sense sounds to me like an out of date or colloquial British useage. In any case, it's not standard modern American English.

The NYTimes, though, loves Britishisms, like 'holiday' and 'queue', no doubt thinking it makes them look sophisticated. I think it's just stupid and pretentious.

Yes to "something of ..."

Yes, "something of..."

Slow news day, Kevin?

The American public isn't paying attention to liberal conspiracy theories anymore, so you are reduced to debating something vs somewhat.

You almost make it too easy.

While we're on usage....isn't it "did it USE to be incorrect"? (It used to be incorrect. It did use to be incorrect.)

Yeah, I think you're right, Kev. The first comment here sounds correct to me. I think the way the article does it has become a common mistake, so it sounds ok to people.

Yes. I suppose a mangling of English goes hand-in-hand with the Post's mangling of the world.

... and re. Al, which do you feel is more accurate?

･ Al is something human.
･ Al is somewhat human.

The NYTimes, though, loves Britishisms, like 'holiday' and 'queue', no doubt thinking it makes them look sophisticated. I think it's just stupid and pretentious.

Sounded like a colloquial American misusage, to me, like 'ain't.'

The problem is that "somewhat" is both a pronoun and an adverb.

Thus, as a pronoun, it means something similar to "something". As an adverb it means something akin to "slightly". Hence your confusion there. Now, let's look at the "of"...but that's way too technical for me this evening. Surely you have a dusty old book on your shelves that will straighten this all out?

Al is subhuman.

I spent several years as a freelance copyeditor, but this is a question that never came up for me.

Either way, it's a (*cough*) somewhat slangy expression; a more formal way of expressing the same thought would be "... a relative outsider..."

And if you're going the slangy, conversational route to begin with, why split hairs over "somewhat of" versus "something of"?

Incorrect as in Nathaniel Hawthorne?

"With somewhat of fantastic in the shape of the clock-tower." English Notebooks, 1870 (posthumous).

The OED lists the usage as "rare" but traces it as far back as 1650 and the Earl of Monmouth.

"Something of" is preferred (i.e. not qualified as "rare") and appears to have been first written down by Addison in Spectator 106: "Sir Roger, amidst all his good Qualities, is something of an Humourist."

So both phrases are about the same vintage, but one has been more widely used historically than the other.

I know this will get lost very quickly, but the boring (descriptive) linguistic response is:

(1) Yes, it's 'correct' in that a good number of people do this. 'Somewhat' is only a little less common than 'something'
(2) For the pedants: no, it's not 'standard' English. Yet. Bwahahaha.
(3) English has virtually no inflection left on its word stems, which makes it ridiculously easy for words in English to change their parts of speech. This was possible in English by the time of Shakespeare, who did this 'conversion' of words from one part-of-speech to another nonsense frequently in his plays. So analysis by part-of-speech is going to be pretty futile.
(4) English prepositions vary wildly in use by regional dialect (of which English has loads). They also shift regularly over time. So in this particular construction, 'of' and 'for' and 'to' and whatever else are all, yes, 'correct' English.

The only newsworthy thing about this is that major newspapers are usually obsessive Standard English pedants. This suggests that the copy editor in charge of this particular article is a "somewhat" speaker, not a "something" speaker. This is unusual enough a construction that it's unlikely even an OCD-type like a newspaper copy editor might not have been thinking about this in their forebrain.

Thingever.

Thingever.

Omit needless Words
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words . . . Many expressions in common use violate this principle.

-- William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White
The Elements of Style Third Edition

Having lived in both countries, I have found that Americans tend to use "somewhat" whereas the British will most often choose "something"

"Something" seems more accurate, especially because "somewhat" is more of a qualifier, like "rather" or "pretty much". Can you be rather an outsider, or are you a kind of outsider? Subtle, but there is a difference.

Or maybe they are both just sentence padders.

Ah Kevin,

I would of thought the less words the better. Your not going to loose any meaning by leaving it out

So both phrases are about the same vintage

Surely you meant to write:

"So both phrases are somewhat the same vintage"

Swopa, it's not really slangy-- idiomatic is the better word. And regardless of whether the Times' phrase passes the test technically, what Kevin suggests is the better usage- like how separating items listed in a sentence using commas (except for an 'and' preceding the final item) is definitively better usage than putting an 'and' between each listed item (which is still technically correct). It's like better usage to the point of the Times' usage being a mistake.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words . . . Many expressions in common use violate this principle.

Or you can just write the way you want, with the limits being staying appropriate to your context and your purpose, instead of pushing us all to write the same, all the time. When difference disappears, what happens to style? It becomes style-less writing. God forbid everyone I read comes to have no style.

Somewhat/Something, in either case the phrase is wrong.

Just because the WaPo is now discovering that Google is lobbying doesn't mean that its something new, nor does it mean that they are any sort of "outsider."

If a representative from Google calls any congress critter I guarantee that the widow from Dubuque will get hung up on.

Google is a very politically savvy organization. Just because their motto is "Don't do evil" doesn't mean they are above politics. Google even sponsors its own Political Action Committee, netPAC.

All that being said, (another weird idiom) this thread is somewhat pedantic.

I believe that Google is something of an insider, while being somewhat of a newcomer to the game.

c.

Meh. If I can understand it, it's right enough.

Sounded like a colloquial American misusage, to me, like 'ain't.'

Ain't actually came from England; it was considered proper speech even in the highest classes up until the mid-1700s, until some jackass named Lowth decided he didn't like it and got everyone to stop using it. It sucks because there's no good alternative.

With Google we can compare the two phrases to see how popular they are. "Somewhat" gives 9200 hits, while "something" gives 25,500 hits. That makes for something of an acceptable, if less common alternative.

From the OED (2c below) as a variant of "something of":

2. a. With dependent genitive: Some part, portion, amount, etc., of something.
b. Const. of with a positive adj. Now rare.
c. = SOMETHING n. 2c.
1841 HELPS Ess., On Treatment of Suitors (1842) 110 You will naturally endeavour to give somewhat of a detailed explanation. 1863 M. HOWITT tr. F. Bremer's Greece & Greeks II. 3 It was somewhat of a surprise to me. 1868 FREEMAN Norm. Conq. (1877) II. 88 He was also somewhat of a time-server.

From the OED (2c below) as a variant of "something of":

2. a. With dependent genitive: Some part, portion, amount, etc., of something.
b. Const. of with a positive adj. Now rare.
c. = SOMETHING n. 2c.
1841 HELPS Ess., On Treatment of Suitors (1842) 110 You will naturally endeavour to give somewhat of a detailed explanation. 1863 M. HOWITT tr. F. Bremer's Greece & Greeks II. 3 It was somewhat of a surprise to me. 1868 FREEMAN Norm. Conq. (1877) II. 88 He was also somewhat of a time-server.

Sorry for the double post above.

But, speaking of usage, Kevin, you wrote: "Did "somewhat of" used to be incorrect but has since become standard usage?"

According to my usage guides, when using the phrase "used to" in a question, the rule is as follows: "in negatives and questions using the auxilliary form DO, the correct form is USE TO, because the form of the verb required is the infinitive" (Oxford Dictionary).

So, used correctly, your question should have been, "Did 'somewhat of' use to be incorrect...?" ( I don't know what to make of grammatical jumble of the second part of your sentence, and how to hook it to the first part.)

in either case the phrase is wrong

Idioms have actually been used to the point of becoming correct. That's like saying "o'clock" is wrong because it should be "of the clock" and people who use "o'clock" are using something that is not really a word, and therefore bad English.

Ain't actually came from England; it was considered proper speech even in the highest classes up until the mid-1700s, until some jackass named Lowth decided he didn't like it and got everyone to stop using it. It sucks because there's no good alternative.

Russell, that's really interesting. I agree, to the extent that no one's gotten me to stop saying 'ain't' when I'm not in a formal context, although I'm perfectly capable of catching myself on it. Still, I disagree there's no alternative, because 'isn't' is just the alternative.

About 25 years ago I got three or four paperbacks of Clive James' collected TV criticism. The idioms still keep coming out unconsciously. James Wolcott seems to have the same problem.
I could have done worse. The point being that Google being an outsider shows the blissful ignorance of the DC elite about the Internets. Like PJ O'Rourke telling his preppie acquaintance that he gets his slacks at Sears: "Who is this Sear fellow?"

I guess the linguists can tell us which is more correct, but I agree with the very first comment by Idaho Nick- "somewhat an outsider" sounds better, even if it isn't gramatically correct.

I mean, they become correct by way of being exceptions to the more generally correct grammatical rule. Anyone who tells you that a generally accepted idiom is incorrect just because it techincally violates the general gramatically correct usage is just wrong. That was the point of my 9:27 AM comment.

There is no English professor in the world who would be able to get by without using a bunch of idioms that technically violate some generally applicable grammatical rule- and they know that they use those idioms, and they consider them correct.

Sometimes idioms are confusing grammatically because they skip a word that was originally used in the idiom to make it more correct. For example, "Thank you," contains no subject, but the subject is in the first person. The full sentence would be, "I thank you." But "thank you" or "thanks" (grammatically strictly, should be "I give you thanks") are considered correct. No place else would ommitting a first-person subject be considered correct- we don't say "Give you this," we say "I'm giving you this." Saying "Give you this" would make one sound insane.

If you just think about what the full, original phrase probably used to be, then a lot of these idioms make sense. But try telling anyone that they're using improper or wrong English by saying "Thank you." They're right- they're not.

My two cents' worth:

If you're going to use an adjective, as in "He looks uncomfortable", you'd say, "He looks somewhat uncomfortable."

If you're going to make a comparison between two nouns (e.g. Bush and ass), you'd say, "Bush is something of an ass."

But saying "such-and-such is somewhat of a [noun]" is something I've never come across before. I'd say it's just plain wrong.

I'm sorry to see that Al hasn't changed: still trusting Bush, still content to be lied to.

Re: ommitting the first-person subject pronoun

I'm excepting, of course, the situation in which the speaker gives a response to an immediately-preceding question, in which the questioner clearly expects the answerer to give a first-person answer. So for example people say, "What are you doing?" and we say, "Going out," or they ask, "What do you do for a living?" and we say, "Work in an office," or, "Lawyer."

In that situation, it's idiomatically common, at least, to ommit the first-person subject pronoun. Can't say (note my internetty, short-hand ommission of the pronoun, ha ha) I think it's that correct (I'd trust an English teacher's judgment on that) but anyway, it's a totally different situation than ommitting the first-person pronoun subject spontaneously- without a prompt- such as walking up to your kids and saying to them first thing in the morning, "Going to a store now," like a bleary-eyed caveman.

Brians' "Common Errors in English Usage" says the idiom is due to confusion between "something of a..." and "somewhat." Now please correct me for using Brians' and not Brians's. Brian's (sic) whole book is available online (?on-line?) through www.wsu.edu. I found it when I noticed a New Yorker writer using the horrible "pawned off" instead of "palmed off."

I'm not certain about the somewhat vs. something question, but I'll tell you this much:

People who say "I'm going to try *and* do X" instead of "try *to* do X" should be sent to a secret CIA prison in eastern Europe. Who's with me? Let's get rid of those bastards once and for all!

...somewhat tall....somewhat blue....somewhat an outsider. "All good."
Somewhat of .... not so good!

Don't get me started. "Somewhat of" has been around a long time (I'm an octogenerian.), suggesting it must be standard usage. But I vote for "something of" as it flows from the mouth more gracefully. (Is that a good standard?)

I am of the pursuasion that English is going to hell in a handbasket in the U.S. On the elevator the other day, I overheard a seemingly sophisiticated lady say over her cell phone, "Where are you at?" This is a common happening to my ears, these days. (As children, we were inclined to answer the question with, "Behind the 'at'" to make the point that the use of "at" at the end of a sentenced was bad form. Letting usage, alone, determine what goes in language seems a sloppy habit. I'm all for usage policemen in this world. Who is with me?

Don't get me started. "Somewhat of" has been around a long time (I'm an octogenerian.), suggesting it must be standard usage. But I vote for "something of" as it flows from the mouth more gracefully. (Is that a good standard?)

I am of the pursuasion that English is going to hell in a handbasket in the U.S. On the elevator the other day, I overheard a seemingly sophisiticated lady say over her cell phone, "Where are you at?" This is a common happening to my ears, these days. (As children, we were inclined to answer the question with, "Behind the 'at'" to make the point that the use of "at" at the end of a sentenced was bad form. Letting usage, alone, determine what goes in language seems a sloppy habit. I'm all for usage policemen in this world. Who is with me?

It comes down to this: Do you want to be a liberal grammarian or a progressive grammarian?

This is an easy one:

"Somewhat" is adverbial, so it should modify an adjective or adverb:

"Somewhat controversial..."

"Something of" can modify a noun:
"Something of a narcissist"

They're both OK.

Now if we can only rescue the predicate adjective in American speech: anybody who cuts onions thinly must paint the town redly.

GG.

I am something bemused by the whole thing.

Somewhat can function as either a noun or an adverb. The case of somewhat of is one in which while the meaning of the overall phrase is adverbial, it is in fact acting as a noun used to show an amount or degree, such as a bit of, lots of or part of.

somewhat

n.
some degree, amount, portion, or part; a bit: often followed by of [somewhat of a surprise]

adv.
to some extent or degree; a little; rather [somewhat late]

- Webster's New World Dictionary

Actualy... I'd say that "Something of an Outsider" would be a worse phrase to use.

"Something of an X" implies a significant or notable example of X. ie, "The fisherman ended the day with something of a catch" or "The grammer pedant was something of an ass". 'Somewhat of' does not have the same implication. So in striving to be 'correct' there, you would have chosen a phrase that did not accurately reflect what you wanted to say.

As a journalist, you should know there are two tests to writing,

1) Can the reader correctly understand what I wanted to say?
2) Is it nice to read?

Everything else is bunk.