While tooling around online, I came across someone who unabashedly used the word “funnest” in a sentence. The Internet is a wonderful place, and I spend a lot of time there, but it isn’t necessarily a haven for grammar purity.
The usage irked me, and the sneaking suspicion that it’s slowly becoming standard irked me even more. A quick search led me (naturally) to both Grammar Girl and the Grammarist. The short version of both is that I was right to be irked: those of us who would rather rake our nails across a chalkboard than to use “funner” or “funnest” are likely on the losing end of linguistic history. There’s nothing fun about that.
I hadn’t known there was any contention about “fun” as an adjective. Certainly in informal conversation but also in any kind of writing I would say, “It was a fun day.” But there are writers of greater purity than I possess (they wouldn’t have started this sentence with the conjunction), and to them “fun” is strictly a noun. Their high standards impress me, but that particular train left the station long ago. I feel for them, though, as I see this next train gathering steam, and I have no intention of boarding it.
Taking it a little further, Merrill Perlman notes that although we say something was “so big,” most of us still balk at saying something was “so fun.” She also gives us a look at which dictionaries and style guides are holding the line on “fun” as a noun, although I wonder if any of them have caved in the six years since she wrote this piece. I wouldn’t write “so fun,” but I have the horrible feeling I’ve said it conversationally without repenting. Please accept this as my mea culpa.
The usage change is the fault of a younger generation, as is much of our moral decay. Language tends to change slowly, of course, and I was among those youngsters who threw caution to the wind and turned “fun” into an adjective. So if I live long enough, I’ll likely need to learn some forbearance for this up-and-coming bunch of delinquents who are having a funner time with the language than I ever did.
