Now, I’m no grammarian, but I like to think I know my English. I’m currently in the midst of a debate with a friend of mine over the phrase “whom of which.”
“Whom of which”?!?! What the heck? That can’t be grammatically correct, can it? He should’ve written “who,” right? He refuses to listen to any argument I make, because he claims to have heard a local television reporter use the phrase in an interview with him, and all I have to back up my side are my brains and a copy of Gavin & Sabin’s Reference Manual for Stenographers and Typists, Fourth Edition. Please help!
Your friend’s phrase seemed vaguely familiar to me, so I typed it ("+whom +of +which") into google and got a couple hundred hits. Didn’t see anything about the rules, but there were many examples of usage.
Peace,
mangeorge
Racinchikki, you can tell your friend from me that to be grammatical his website ought to say, “This page is dedicated to my chicklet friend Churp, who was eaten by Jenn.”
Anal retentively going the extra mile–English 101 is now in session.
Eh, just because people use it doesn’t mean it’s not nonsensical. I’ve been speaking English all my life, I read books omnivorously, I scored off the charts on all the verbal tests they give you in school, I probably have a bigger vocabulary than most of the people I know, and I’ve never heard anybody say “whom of which” before. At all. Ever. Or “who of which”, either. Neither phrase is remotely grammatical.
Of 258 Google hits, following ManGeorge’s instructions, the following were the only relevant hits on the first three pages (that weren’t just word lists that happened to include the words “whom”, “of”, and “which”). And reading things like the following doesn’t make me believe it’s a hitherto undiscovered proper English usage, but rather just another modern idiocy, like “irregardless”, which although widely used, is also nonsensical.
Correct: Either, "The casting of Bad Girls featured some unknown names, new faces, some of whom have certainly made a name for themselves during the past three years. "
Or: “The casting of Bad Girls featured some unknown names, new faces, who have certainly made a name for themselves during the past three years.”
Correct: Either, “But all the people with exception of someone I love, who is my brother…”
Or: “But all the people with exception of someone I love,which is my brother…”
Correct: Either, “I am a mother of two beautiful girls, Katie (6) and Rebecca (2) which keeps their father and I pretty busy at home.”
Or, “I am a mother of two beautiful girls, Katie (6) and Rebecca (2) who keep their father and I pretty busy at home.”
And of course, it’s “their father and me” not “their father and I”.
[warning: this website is going to play “Spoonful of Sugar” at you ad nauseum.]
Correct: “My father’s family are the Jensens, of which I am the 4th generation born in the U.S…”
Correct: “…with the acception [sic] of Mrs. Ketchum, which I just found out about.”
Correct: “who is 5 yrs. old who has c.p,”. And “whom of which is son his name is Tyler,” probably ought to be taken out altogether, being what we in the language trade call a “sentence fragment”, and the information that the son is named Tyler ought to be combined, as in “my son Tyler, who is 5 yrs. old who has c.p.”
Correct: “I was asked to create the site by one of the owners who was also a good friend.”
So, clearly, there’s a small segment of the population that’s using “whom of which” to mean either simply “which” or “whom” or “who”. It’s a kind of redundancy, like “irregardless”.
None of the hits were from what I would call “erudite” people, meaning news cites, salon.com articles, scholarly references. I think it’s clear there’s no consensus of educated people out there that this is a good usage.
