Are horses 鈥榬earing to go鈥� or 鈥榬aring to go鈥�?
滨鈥檓 raring to go. Or am I rearing to go instead? Which one is correct? This is a nerve-racking question, or perhaps a nerve-wracking one.
滨鈥檓 raring to go. Or am I rearing to go instead? Which one is correct? This is a nerve-racking question, or perhaps a nerve-wracking one.
滨鈥檓 raring to start this column. 滨鈥檓 so ready that I might even drop the 鈥済鈥� 鈥� 滨鈥檓 rarin鈥� to go. Recently I鈥檝e noticed lots of people who are 鈥渞earing to go鈥� instead. Which one is correct? This is a nerve-racking question, or perhaps a nerve-wracking 辞苍别.听
It turns out that these are all acceptable uses, even to medium-level sticklers such as the editors of Fowler鈥檚 Modern English Usage. You probably have your favorites 鈥� I prefer 鈥渞aring鈥� and 鈥渞acking鈥� 鈥� but the variants are equally correct.聽
If you are raring to go, you are 鈥渇ull of enthusiasm and eagerness.鈥� I had always associated the phrase with car racing, drivers excitedly revving their engines before the flag goes down and they speed off. It actually refers to hyped-up horses, not race car drivers though. In certain regions of England, and parts of the American South and Midwest, rear is pronounced and spelled rare. While a horse 鈥渞ears up鈥� on its hind legs in standard English, it 鈥渞ares up鈥� in these dialects. When you are 鈥渞aring to go鈥� then, you are like a horse dancing around, ready for action.聽 聽
The phrase seems to have originated with the dialect form, so raring to go is the default. Rearing to go is not wrong, per se, but sounds a bit awkward. It is a聽hypercorrection, preferred by people who don鈥檛 feel comfortable with a colloquial word or want to point out 鈥渢he horsey connection,鈥� as Fowler鈥檚 puts it.
Nerve-racking first appeared in an 1812 letter from Percy Bysshe Shelley, in which the poet bids farewell to the 鈥渘erve racking & spirit quelling metropolis.鈥澛�
Nerve-wracking was occurring here and there by 1900, but in 1920 the 鈥渞-鈥� form was nearly 15 times as common as the 鈥渨-鈥� form, according to Google鈥檚 Ngram Viewer, which counts instances of words found in Google鈥檚 corpus of digitized books. 鈥淲-鈥� has staged a comeback though; Fowler鈥檚 argues that nerve-wracking is now the more common spelling globally, though not yet in American English.
Shelley鈥檚 鈥渘erve racking鈥� refers to 鈥渢he rack,鈥� a medieval torture device. Other Romantic-era writers turned the phrase in different ways:聽Thomas De Quincy described 鈥渘erve-shattering perils鈥�; difficulties were 鈥渘erve-rending.鈥�
Nerve-wracking fits right into this pattern. Wrack is related to wreck, both of which can mean 鈥渢o destroy, ruin.鈥� In my ideal English, it would be possible to draw a distinction between the 鈥渞-鈥� and the 鈥渨-鈥� forms.聽
Something nerve-racking would be annoying, or even painful, but not as bad as something nerve-wracking,聽e.g., 鈥渘erve-wrecking.鈥� In practice, though, both variants mean the same thing 鈥� 鈥渟tressful鈥� or 鈥渆xtremely trying.鈥�