Since it is the appropriate season, and since I have seen it in print both ways, I am left wondering which construction is grammatically correct: “He graduated college” or “He graduated from college.”
Including the preposition sounds right to me since it appears to be a transitive construction without it. But IANAEM, so I open the floor to those who are (and to anyone else who cares to add his $0.02 worth, since I know you will anyway).
I think it’s not quite correct to say he graduated college, but the word may be undergoing an evolutionary process that will one day make that usage correct. The verb to graduate already has gone through one significant change. It used to be used in the passive voice; that is, somebody would say i]he was graduated from college. I think there the sense of it was something like, he was graduated from college (by the trustees or regents).
Now the graduate himself has become the subject of the sentence. Perhaps some of the board grammarians can come up with some examples of other verbs that have gone through a similar change.
SoP essentially has it right. Originally, the university was the actor – The university graduated him.
Then it went through the process that SoP describes. First, the passive voice – He was graduated from the university*. And then He graduated from the university..
I’ve seen the final form, He graduated the university, ever since I was in high school, about 20 years ago. It still sounds illiterate to me, but, unfortunately it seems to be more common than any of the other forms. So it has become correct, I suppose.
That’s the part that gets me - it’s becoming correct.
How do things that are clearly incorrect in standard English get started in the first place, let alone become so widely accepted so as to eventually become correct?
I think in this case it’s a matter of the grammar evolving to conform to the sense people have of the word. People now perceive the graduate to be the actor, as acsenray notes, but the essential meaning of to graduate remains the same.
This is not the same as when people totally misuse a word, in my view.
Spoken English is almost a different language from formal written English, but the former strongly drives the latter.
Well, in the sense of “essential” that means “opposite.” It still grates on me because I always see some callow frat boy trying to hand a diploma to an ivy-covered building.
To me, this is as close as anyone gets to real misuse. It’s essentially the same type of mistake as when people mix up imply/infer or comprises/composes.
Before even I was a kid, “sup” meant “eat, in the evening.” If Grandpa ever said, “Sup, dog,” it was a command when he set down the pooch’s bowl. Now, it’s a greeting; ('Sup, dog?) from one man to another.
English, and perhaps moreso, American English, is a continually changing thing. Someday, it may be proper to congradulate a friend on her graduation. Or, maybe not.
Well sup (supper) is a different word from sup (what’s up) so there was no mutation in meaning of the word “sup”.
But you knew that, good story :).
Do you think you will graduate?
I already graduated.
You graduated?
Yes, I graduated yesterday.
You really graduated high school?
High school? I’m 22. I graduated college!
Do you think you’ll graduate from a university one day with a doctorate?
Why not? My dad graduated university when he was only 23.
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Spoken English takes shortcuts. When the ‘from’ is not really need due to context, it drops out. Just like the ‘to’ or ‘for’ in front of indirect objects (“give (to) the boy a diploma!”).
As mentioned above, formal writing or speechifying would always include the ‘from’ after ‘graduat*’.
Peace.
I’ve never heard the verb “to graduate” used in that transitive sense in Australia. Here people definitely say “I graduated *from * ABC university with a degree in XYZ”.