Will's Word of the Week: Please

As you all may know by now, supposedly simple, "everyday" words can have intricate etymologies that can drive a usageaster (a self-appointed language expert) crazy. Please is one of those words, and is brought to us courtesy of Sara Bruestle.

As a transitive verb (a verb that needs a subject and an object), to please means to give enjoyment or to make someone glad or contented, or to be the will or desire of someone. As an intransitive verb (a verb that doesn't need an object), to please means to be agreeable or to have the will or desire (i.e. the wish) to do something. As an adverb (used to modify other words), please, is, of course, a polite request, and can be used as a civil "yes" to a polite offer.

Please is of rather diverse Anglo-Norman extraction, with various 12th-century forms, starting with the Middle English plesen, from the Old French plaisir, meaning "to please," from the classical Latin placere, meaning "to be pleasing or agreeable," and the Latin placet, which means "it pleases." In this sense, it shares the same root as the word pleasant.

In its older meaning as a verb, to please made its very first written appearances in the middle of the 1300s, but was notably used in John Wycliffe's English translation of the Bible, which took place in the early 1380s, in such verses as Isaiah 42:1, which reads, "Al plesede to hym in hym my soule." Wycliffe was the first to translate the entirety of the Bible into English, and his work was later carried on by William Tyndale in the 1520s.

Then came Shakespeare, who helped move to please into its modern, adverbial form. Although it could be said that as the courteous introduction to a polite request, please first showed up in about 1563, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is the Bard who managed to utilize it in his Love's Labor's Lost, with the line, "Let me say no my liedge, and yf you please," which was first performed for Queen Elizabeth I in Christmas 1597 and published in 1598, and in the Twelfth Night, or What you will, with Viola's line, "Pray sir, put your sword vp if you please," written in about 1601 and published in 1623 in the First Folio.

Although it first showed up in about 1771, please as a true adverb was notably recorded April 17, 1787, in Robert Burns' Letters, with the line, "In making up the accounts of my copies, please mind that I am paid for the following number." Burns was a famous Scottish poet, and author of the version of "Auld Lang Syne" that is traditionally sung at midnight on New Year's Eve.

Another appearance of please was in 1836 in Charles Dickens' first book (actually a collection of short stories), Sketches by Boz, with the phrase, "'Please sir, missis has made tea,' said a middle-aged female servant, bobbing into the room."

Finally, please can be used as an interjection in order to express a feeling of exasperation (think "for crying out loud!"), and its first recorded use in this sense was in British novelist E.M. Forster's A Room with a View, with the line "'I see ... and now you have gone over to the enemy.' 'Oh, please!'"

As this is the last word for the quarter, so to speak, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you for your thoughtful suggestions and for taking the time to build your vocabulary alongside me. Please, have a most pleasant summer! Cheers!

Reach columnist Will Mari at wtm2@u.washington.edu.