A Word, Please: Sorry, Gerry, ‘predominate’ is also an adjective

Dear readers, I’d like to introduce you to someone. His name’s Gerry Coleman and if you don’t know who he is, don’t feel bad. Neither do I. Heck, for all I know, he doesn’t even exist. But every conscientious user of the English language should know about Gerry, or, as he prefers to be called: “a stickler for grammar, etc.”

The important thing to know about Gerry is that he’s out there reading stuff. Possibly your stuff. So you need to beware.

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I became aware of Gerry’s existence while skimming the entry for the word “predominate” at Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary. He was one of a handful of users who felt compelled to answer the question posed by the website, “What made you want to look up ‘predominate’?”

His answer: “Just to confirm the illiterate use of this word (a verb) frequently lately, when ‘predominant’ (an adjective) is correct.”

That would be an “aw, snap!” rejoinder if only Gerry had his facts straight. But he doesn’t. Consider this sentence from an article I was editing that day: “Manufacturing wind turbines relies on rare earth elements mined predominately in China.”

Though this sentence uses the adverb form, it’s a good example of the issue Gerry brought up because scenarios involving the adverb forms are more common. Should the “predominately” in our wind turbine example be “predominantly,” with no E and an added N?

To answer this question, you need to focus on the parts of speech.

“Predominant” is an adjective. It means having superior strength, influence or authority, or being the most common. You see it a lot in uses like “Older people are the predominant group in that neighborhood.”

“Predominate” is primarily a verb. It’s like “dominate,” but with a prefix attached. Merriam-Webster’s says it can be either a transitive or intransitive verb that means to hold an advantage or exert control over someone or something.

Using it as an intransitive verb, you might say “Older people predominate in that neighborhood.” Its transitive uses are a little harder to imagine. Whether it would be better to say “Older people predominate younger people in that neighborhood” or just “Older people predominate that neighborhood” isn’t clear because the transitive form is so uncommon.

Adverbs are rooted in adjectives. Badly, happily, carefully, recently, serendipitously and many others are really just adjectives with “ly” tacked on the end. You can’t do that with verbs. Walk, think, cook, believe and try can’t morph into walkly, thinkly, cookly, believely or tryly.

So if “predominate” were exclusively a verb, “predominately” would be a nonsense word. But had Gerry looked more closely at the online dictionary entry, he would have seen that “predominate” is also an adjective. It means “predominant.”

This is not a recent development. “Predominate” has been used as an adjective, as in “Older people are the predominate group in the neighborhood,” since the 16th century.

So “predominate” is a legitimate adjective. And for the same reasons you can turn the adjective “predominant” into the adverb “predominantly,” you can make the adjective “predominate” into the adverb “predominantly.”

Both are legitimate.

I had come across this issue before and I remembered the punch line. But I looked it up again anyway because I wanted to know which form is “better” from an editing standpoint. In copy editing, whenever there’s more than one correct form of a word, we go with whichever is considered more standard.

Reading the Merriam entry, it was clear that “predominately” is the “variant” form of the more standard “predominantly.” So I changed it.

This is a good policy for two reasons. First, it helps ensure consistency. Even if “ambience” has multiple correct spellings, you don’t want it spelled “ambiance” on page one and “ambience” on page two. But perhaps more important, choosing the more widely accepted form helps deflect the ire of guys like Gerry, who, let’s face it, probably should have been looking up the word “illiterate” instead.

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JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.