A wordsmith's garden of 'versus'
Do you remember when versus was Latin? And just about the only place you saw it was in names of legal cases, plus or minus the occasional prizefight? (I was going to reinforce my point, Dear Reader, with a YouTube clip of Sonny Liston vs. Floyd Patterson, but that seemed not very Monitoresque, especially when I realized that the sounds of punches landing were the real thing, and not the work of some foley artist. But you get my point.) Versus has mellowed a bit over the centuries.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines versus as a preposition, from Latin, meaning straightforwardly 鈥渁gainst.鈥� It is 鈥渆mployed in Law to denote an action by one party against another.鈥� Oxford鈥檚 first citation is from 1447-48: 鈥淎lso the jugement by twene ... John Husset versus John Notte.鈥�
Three centuries-plus later, John Adams wrote his beloved Abigail, 鈥淚 am engaged in a famous case,鈥� the cause of King, of Scarborough, versus the mob that broke into his house.鈥� The context here is still legal, although the matter was presumably not listed on the docket as 鈥淜ing v. the mob.鈥�
But by 1873, the philosopher Herbert Spencer was using versus to refer not to literal legal adversaries, but to two opposing ideas, albeit with a military metaphor: 鈥淭he old battle-ground of free will versus necessity.鈥�
More recently, published 鈥渁 conversation鈥� between Andrew McCarthy and acclaimed travel writer Paul Theroux. It included this from Mr. McCarthy, referring to Mr. Theroux鈥檚 latest book:
鈥淓arly on, you say: 鈥楾he window of Africa, like the window on a train rushing through the night, is a distorting mirror that partly reflects the viewer鈥檚 own face.鈥� That to me is something the traveler is always wrangling with. What鈥檚 real versus what do I want this place to be?鈥�
Many contemporary dictionaries capture this sense of the word, including , which offers this: 鈥淎lternative to something: as opposed to or contrasted with such considerations as money versus job satisfaction.鈥�
People using versus in this less legalistic 鈥� or pugilistic 鈥� sense may simply be seeking a more concise alternative to the phrase 鈥渁s compared with.鈥�
Note 鈥渃ompared with.鈥� To compare something to something else is to assert an essential similarity 鈥� even when it鈥檚 a bit of a leap. 鈥淭he critics compared her singing to Ren茅e Fleming鈥檚.鈥� Compare with is used to juxtapose 鈥渢wo or more items to illustrate similarities and/or differences,鈥� as the puts it 鈥� as in the 鈥渃ompare and contrast鈥� formula so familiar from essay exams at school.
is rooted in a Latin word for 鈥渢urning鈥� 鈥� the idea being that two adversaries turn to face or confront each other. (And involves literally two parties banging their foreheads together.)
That same root shows up in many Latin-derived words in English 鈥� to reverse is to 鈥渢urn back,鈥� for instance. To be versatile, to give another example, is from a Latin word meaning to be 鈥渃apable of turning with ease to varied subjects or tasks,鈥� according to the . But when the word first came into English, around 1600, it meant 鈥渋nconstant.鈥� All that jumping around was seen as a bad thing. Within a century that had changed. Nowadays, management gurus point to the ability to put one thing down and turn to another as a sign of personal effectiveness. And now versus is showing some of that same versatility.
