Would have thought this had been covered, but a search brought up nothing.
I think I understand that a president, judge or senator who always is addressed by the title even after leaving office, would be referred to as “the former___,” but one who had been thrown out of office could be called “the ex___.”
It gets murkier with, say, members of the armed forces who leave way before retirement. Most, I would think, would be called “an ex soldier,” would they not? From what I know, anybody who served in the Marines always thinks of himself or herself as a Marine, so would be “a former Marine.”
Is it “an ex-athlete” or “a former athlete” and why?
How about an alcoholic, a minister who just quit, a transsexual? A corpse who came back to life (oh, sorry, that would be a zombie).
Divorced people always refer to their “ex,” so where does the line of demarcation come?
Is there an actual rule, or just common useage? My dictionaries really don’t seem to help much here.
As I understood it, only Marines made the distinction between ex and former, apparently as a code to distinguish fake Marines from real ones. But maybe I don’t fully understand it.
Theodore Bernstein was the head copyeditor at The New York Times for years. He covers the issue tangentially in his style guide, The Careful Writer.
He’s more concerned by odd headlines like “Tax Ex-Official Held,” instead of Ex-Tax Official Held. Since he would allow former in place of ex- in a non-headline situation, I think they are interchangeable except where confusing in context.
It isn’t. Ex- comes form the Latin preposition ex, which has been used in this sense in antiquity already. “Estranged” also has the very common ex- prefix in it, but it wasn’t shortened in order to form the prefix.
As Exapno Mapcase said about Bernstein, the more glaring error is the placement of the “ex/former.” “Ex-Chicago Policeman” means a cop who once lived in Chicago. “Chicago Ex-Policeman” is a Chicago man who was once a cop. It gets even more absurd with “ex-gay activist” and “ex-black leader.”
I disagree. Clearly in your last two examples, “gay activist” and “black leader” are phrases operating as nouns, not adjectives followed by the noun they modify, so “ex-gay activist” and “ex-black leader” are correct, and generally unambiguous, except, I suppose, in the case of someone who is an activist about having been “cured” of his homosexuality, or Michael Jackson, respectively.
“Ex-Chicago Policeman” only means a cop who once lived in Chicago under the most pedantic and anti-common sense (which phrase is not mean to imply that such sense is uncommon) parsing.
Yeah, I’m afraid that Bernstein’s point was that ex- should precede the entire phrase because that generally was the most normal and understandable way of speaking in common English. Ex-Chicago Policeman is what he would have recommended, and it would have the same meaning as former Chicago Policeman, i.e. a Chicago Policeman who ain’t no more.
As former Marine, I think the reason we don’t use the term “ex Marine” is a kind of jargon snobbery (in which I gladly participate. Marines are snobs, admittedly)
I see often in the media the term “ex-Marine”, but we insiders have our own special term to denote a sacred value of those who served in the mean, green fighting machine: once a Marine, always a Marine. “Semper” means semper. If you served honorably, you are never “ex” just “formerly served”
Former Marines are fond of saying, “There is only one ex-Marine: Lee Harvey Oswald”.
There are no ex-alcoholics or former alcoholics. Alcoholism is considered a disease and once an alkie, always an alkie. An alcoholic who no longer drinks is a nonpracticing alcoholic, I suppose. If they’re going through a 12 step program, they’re a recovering alcoholic (quite a mouthful, huh?). Amongst AA and NA circles, we just say “in recovery.” (My dad’s a recovering alcoholic and drug addict)
No idea about the minister, but if you’d like, I’ll ask a friend of mine who is going through seminary.
A transsexual is someone who has undergone gender reassignment surgery, correct? I believe the trend is to call them what they are now - if they were born male but went through surgery to become female, I’d just call them a woman. “Ex-man” or “former man” is, first of all, too wordy, and second of all, kind of demeaning sounding.
Whilst nothing to do with the OP, in the spirit of fighting ignorance, allow me to just point out that that is only opinion and not one as widely shared as people seem to think. AA is probably the widest recognised organisation in the treatment of alcoholism and as it’s their opinion it gets more air-time than other opinions, but ultimately it is just an opinion.
Agreed. That “once an alkie always an alkie” bit of wisdom always struck me as slightly idiotic. If you haven’t taken a drink in ten years you are not an alcoholic. Period. It’s like saying “I had chicken pox when I was seven, but I still consider myself a recovering chicken pox sufferer.”
As to whether you are a former or ex-alcoholic is a good question though. I’ve always considered the difference to be former=once was, while ex=not anymore. They seem like two ways to say the same thing but focusing on either the “used to be” or the “no longer” to different degrees. That’s why we say “ex-wife” to focus on the fact that I’m no longer married to her, versus “former marine” to focus on the fact that I used to be a marine.
By the way, I don’t have an ex-wife and I never was a marine.
