2021-07-14
14 分钟Coming up on Word Matters, we reach into the mailbag for more questions from listeners like you.
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Neil Servin, Amin Shea,
Peter Sokolowski and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
Vice versa is a Latin phrase familiar to many English speakers.
But are all those speakers using it to communicate the same thing?
Here's Neal Servin with our first question.
We have a question from someone who just goes by a high school student and they say,
I am a listener of word matters and I was wondering
if you could talk about the definition of the phrase vice versa.
Merriam-Webster defines it as with the order changed or with the relations reversed.
But I've noticed many people use it in a slightly different sense.
For example, if they say, A1 goes to B2 and vice versa,
they mean that A2 goes to B1, which is not exactly the reverse of a relationship between two items.
That is a really good observation in regards to our definition in that it doesn't really cover the complexity of that example that you're giving where A2 goes to B1 and A1 goes to B2,
I would say the definition might cover a more general use,
a more flattened use that we see in English where people simply just use it to mean in the other order or conversely rather than more complex relationships where we have four parts and they're switching to each other.
The common definition that we give is that it's with the order reversed.
So if you can say you can wear a red shirt with blue shorts or vice versa,
you are switching the roles.