I first remember hearing the use of the phrase “waiting on” someone to mean “waiting for” someone in the Rolling Stones song, Waiting On A Friend. It struck me as very strange, since everybody understands what waiting “for” someone means, or “waiting on” a line, but to me, waiting “on” people meant coming up to them with a small pad and pencil while reciting the Special of the Day.
Then I started hearing it in some people’s everyday speech. It bothered me a bit but not to the point of raising an objection. Now, over the past 5 years I have started to heart it extended to refer to events, and have even seen it in semi-formal business documents, e.g. a memo listing “items we’re still waiting on for Project X”.
I’ve given up hope that this is a passing ph[r]ase, idiomatically speaking. I think I read somewhere once in a survey of American English that this turn of phrase was characteristic of Southerners. Is this true? If so, I wonder how it caught on so suddenly elsewhere (at least here in the Northeast US)?
And what about British/UK English speakers? Were the Stones just affecting a Southern American dialect for that song (which they often do)?
Yes, I hate this too; but it’s become common enough that it’s even crept into my speech. I hate it when I unconciously imitate the speaking styles of others.
It’s not just a British thing; “waiting on” also regularly stands in for “waiting for” in the part of Ohio where I grew up. Since my parents were from elsewhere I was taught “waiting for” at home, but usually heard “waiting on” at school and among my friends.
Wherein a certain Professor Vaux, formerly of Harvard University, conducted a multi-year survey of typical points of variation for American “dialects”, such as whether or not one thinks “cot” and “caught” rhyme, how the word “aunt” is pronounced, a question about “waiting on” versus “waiting in” line, etc. Nothing about “waiting on” or “waiting for” a person, though.
Oddly, an overall Yes/No percentage for responses is available, as well as a plotting of the survey results by region, but not results by frequency by region, which would be to me the really interesting part. They do list these as “preliminary” results though; I suppose they’re still crunching the numbers.
One entry on the list reminded me of something similar: somewhere I picked up pronouncing the word “almond” (the nut) as “ammond”, must have been common in my neighborhood growing up, but I almost never hear this anymore (and try to catch and force myself to say “all-mond”, like the Greg Allman Band, to avoid comment).
It appears this is a regionalism as well. To me, waiting “in” a line refers to the physical arrangement of being in a file, while waiting “on” a line refers to the idleness filled by toe-tapping and daydreaming while waiting for my turn (or these days, fiddling with my Palm Pilot or cell phone). So taking a numbered ticket at a deli or the DMV, or getting one of those pagers you get at some restaurants that signal you when your table is up, would be a case of being on line while not being in line, so to speak.
OK… what about logging in versus logging on to a computer network?
Is there a corrolation whereby people who think of themselves of getting “on” a line log “on” to a system? Which I do, for both of them, despite being faced with a “login:” prompt of every UNIX system I have ever used for the past 15 years. I guess the first multi-user computer network I encountered, a CDC “Cyber” system, must have prompted for a logon…
I’ve lived in the Northeast my entire life (MA & NH) and the only time I’ve ever heard the expression is in movies/books with British people, so it’s not caught on all over the Northeast. Maybe it’s mostly a NY/NJ thing, I mean after all there are people in NY who wait on lines instead of in them like the rest of us.
This is a hobbyhorse of usage guru Bryan Garner, who insists that all-mond is lowbrow and that anyone who is anyone would of course pronounce it ah-mond. I was surprised to read this, never having heard ah-mond before, and immediately went off to measure the height of my brow.
Then again, I think Garner should spell his first name Brian.
I don’t know, but considering the extent of German immigration to the USA, I wouldn’t be surprised if German grammar has influenced the development of American English.
