A bit on language.

[teres]

The following is an account of how I looked into the usage of a certain phrase, and came to a conclusion that might be unexpected.

I have the bad habit of hanging around on Tumblr, and I was now drawn to a poll about what "favouring a leg" means. The majority of the responses (about 60%, from what I've gathered) thought it means that you make extra use of that leg because the other one's injured, and the remaining 40% thought it means that you're "doing the leg a favour" by not using it. I was quite strongly convinced that it was the former, and even after finding out that it was apparently the 'wrong' option, I still think that it makes more sense; if you favour a tool, you want to use it more, after all, and I see my legs much the same way, so the analogy makes sense.

I saw barely anyone suggesting that it was a language change, which seemed like a quite likely option to me, along with lots of people insisting that the 60% were wrong (never mind that you couldn't say that about either option if the division really was skewed that way...). Today, though, someone added a lengthier reblog that argued that people haven't been exposed to the phrase in context, so they can't have fully formed opinions on it (which is fair), explaining that it always means "dislikes using the leg" in veterination contexts, and then declaring that it's entirely based on "unfamiliarity and vibes-based readings".

(As a sidenote, "beg the question" has developed the meaning "raise the question" from what seems to me like "unfamiliarity and vibes-based readings" (because few people would know it in its original context and it's completely opaque). So... why wouldn't "favour a leg" be able to shift in the same way?)

Looking further, I found someone else saying that if you want to show that my reading is valid, you need "evidence of people using it in that manner spontaneously as part of an effort to communicate the behavior of an injured individual." So, let me share the results of my search for that evidence! Before now, I'd searched my own laptop for this, and I already came up with two unambiguous hits. The first is this:

Heavily favouring his good leg, he stood and swiftly launched himself into an experimental flight.

~One for Sorrow, Two For Joy, "One for Sorrow", Chapter 7, by Clive Woodall

That's quite unambguously a case of what I was searching. Further, I found this comment on Wikipedia, where someone says (in the context of Internet Explorer messing up layout) "Internet Explorer with all of its quirks is the bugbear of many a website designer, but design for it we must. 'Favouring the other leg', so to speak, is not technically a solution." Though I had a bit of trouble decoding this, and though it is metaphorical, it does count, as it refers to Internet Explorer as a injured leg that others might seek to avoid by favouring the other leg.

Two cases is much too little to decide it's actually used, though, so let me have a look at how these phrases are used in Dreamwidth:

"Favo[u]r [his/her] good leg" gives me 38 hits, of which I'll quote the oldest and youngest finds for both "favour his good leg" and "favour her good leg" (with links to the places I found them, so they can be verified).

• "She takes the kid's arm and pulls him upright, favouring his good leg." 16 June 2024
• "His cane was hooked on the counter of the nurse’s station, clinging to the edge of the plastic wood, and he favoured his good leg, ignoring the dull pain in the other." 29 January 2006
• "“It is if you injure yourself further,” dark eyebrows furrowed in concern when he noticed how she was favoring her good leg as she turned and hobbled towards the balcony." 7 July 2011
• "[She follows him obediently, clearly favoring her good leg, but still managing to walk at least passably well.]" 20 January 2014

As for "favoring the other leg", I can find 7 hits, of which I'll quote the first and last:

• ""I'd like that," she replied simply, frowning as she looked at the way he was favouring the other leg, and the pain both in his face and his aura - it was impossible to ignore."" 19 July 2004
• "she doesn't even need to favour the other leg anymore." 25 August 2019

In addition, a quick look on Wikipedia yielded another result for this on the following page: "George slips on spilled shaving cream and sprains his good leg. He begins favoring the other leg." The page history tells me that this was added on 10 October 2006.

Counting this up, I have 48 hits from 2004 to 2024, which is a quite meager number, but given that the occurrences I quoted don't seem to be linked to each other (and given the rather small scope of my research), I find it enough to conclude that "favouring a leg" is used as "putting more weight on a leg" by some people. Though I can't make a case for language change, I can say that it exists in this way, and I'm quite interested to see how the use of the phrase will evolve!

ETA: Searching for variations of "favour one's bad leg", I found 30 hits on Dreamwidth, for a ratio of 44% to 56%, so it seems that the results of the poll do reflect how the phrase is actually used (lots of users who don't seem to have used it aside). Actually running the numbers helps, as we can once again see!

Comments

[chessybell_90]

Huh. I'm not going to change my usage of it - I'm in the 40% - but the shift is interesting.

[teres]

Let me first note that given the numbers I note in the ETA, and that Wikisource (which has older works) doesn't have any of these phrases, the shift does seem to be real!

That aside, I wasn't exactly willing to change my usage of this phrase when I thought I was in a very tiny minority, so I wouldn't expect anyone to do so. The numbers are also close enough together that I won't complain about; if the ratio was 10% to 90%, I might, but both are clearly accepted variants here. And yes, I find it quite interesting, too, as I didn't expect my usage to actually be gaining ground, instead of it being something only a handful of people use.

[chessybell_90]

Besides, I prefer older usages anyways. :)

[teres]

I still remember that! I'm not familiar enough with somewhat older English to use much of them, but I have learned to appreciate them myself.

Update.

[pangolin20]

Reading through the notes again, there's lot of people being quite dogmatic about the new usage being wrong, talk about how "people using it wrong on the internet" doesn't make this right (which it does if these people are the ones using it), and the second poster I mentioned saying that the burden is to find examples of "favour a leg" being used in the new way. That's quite fair, and they even find an example of someone "favouring her good knee"... but then they say it's not their responsibility to provide evidence, which I'd say it is, because you can't have a fully informed opinion otherwise.

What I unfortunately don't find: anyone running the numbers on this. (Shoutout to a-wonderful-use-of-server-space for being sensible about this, though; and they've apparently heard it in the new way in medical contexts for 30 years, which would explain why it already appears multiple times in the 2000s on Livejournal.)

Edit: Someone (eyes-in-the-void) has come up with an actually sensible comment:

Okay. So this is an example of two different populations with different backgrounds interpreting the word ‘favoring’ in different ways.

[explanation of how people come up with either way of using the phrase]

This is NOT vibes based, and I would argue neither interpretations are incorrect. The word “favor” has different definitions, both of which are valid and are going to cone naturally depending on background. And frankly- just dismissing 60% of people as “wrong” when it comes to linguistics is not great. Because language is about communication, and this poll is telling us there is a discrepancy between how the term is understood based on background.

I agree 100% (and I've also got some evidence for this)!

Re: Update.

[teres]

Ooh, guess what the very first result for "favor his right leg" on Dreamwidth is?

"He opens his car door and very carefully extricates himself from the vehicle, clearly favoring his right leg and clearly not testing the capabilities of his left leg." 11 January 2008

That's enough evidence for me to feel quite sure in my conclusion... and enough for me to complain a bit further about the dogmaticism I encountered. Just now, I saw someone talking about how it's "one thing to not know and to interpret it one way" and another to "to dig your heels in", to which I say that it's one thing to not know that the new usage is perfectly valid and in fact in the majority, and another thing to refuse to even entertain that possibility and resort to personal attacks.

Edit:

Here is someone suggesting that it could actually be true (in the tags), and even bringing up corpus research, which is very nice... but then they unfortunately backed down and said they didn't actually know. Still, good to see someone who at least had the same idea as me!

(Also, from the very newest batch of reblogs: "[making the mistake of using the new version is fine if you don't hear it, but that doesn't excuse ignorance when you can look it up], and if you refuse to correct your ignorance with research or resources then that's called stupidity, which is what these results are".

...I guess I'm stupid for refusing to falsify the results of my research, then?? I'd love to play the Uno Reverse card here and see if they'd have an open mind about the results. In any case, now that I've explained just what drove me to write this post in the first place, I'll be silent for a while.)

[teres]

I've found some people actually getting what's going on here: one and two. Not knowing what a word means can change its meaning, after all, and that doesn't make the change invalid!