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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

I'm really sorry for being pedantic, I'm uusally not like this, but I have seen this frequently on HN. It's making do, not making due.

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In all seriousness, I greatly appreciate corrections like this in a way that so few people do.

Technically your "that" is superfluous. ;)

> In all seriousness, I greatly appreciate corrections like this in a way so few people do.

I upvoted you.

I wouldn't be so sure. "To make due" seems correct to me, as a foreign speaker, because the grammar suggests a noun phrase as object, because it works en lieu "to settle debt". It's easy to see how french-illiterate anglophones would mishear due as do. So I guess you make do now. And I have to ask how are you making do today?

As a speaker of English where "do" and "due" are not pronounced the same I assure you it's "do".

Don't mind me but... I double checked :D and you're right !! :)

- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_do

- http://grammarist.com/usage/make-do-make-due/

According to the second link, here's where it comes from:

'Make do is short for make [something] do well enough, where do carries the rare sense to serve a specified purpose. So this do is similar to the one used in sentences such as, “I could use a cup of coffee, but tea will do.”'

interesting !

edit: formatting

You double checked second hand sources which don't link to primary sources, so at best you are speculating (that) I were wrong, thank you very much.

Edit: And either way, I didn't contest make do as it is used now, I merely hinted at a different origin. So, by that line of reasoning, if make due is in use, it is correct simply by merit of custom, as well.

PS: And this is why these comments are frowned upon, they invariably lead to discussion without a slight chance of consensus.

PPS: But since I tried it already, googles index of old books shows a CLEAR preference for make due. In my opinion though, I'd settle on neither is correct, just like shortenings like "I'd" aren't correct to use in writing.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=make+do%2C+mak...

You're right you're right. My sources weren't primary. I liked grammatist because they had some sort of ethimological insight as to why it's do rather than due. Anyway, here's a primary source:

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/make_do

Happy ? :)

P.S. use 'make due' if you want. Parent was just trying to be nice.

P.S.S Sourcing grammatist again (soooorrryy):

'While it’s tempting to call make due a misspelling and leave it at that, make due appears often enough (about once for every ten instances of make do in a current Google News search) to have gained some acceptance, and some people (including commenters on this post) find it at least as logical as make do. Perhaps due, which is mainly an adjective, could here bear the sense appropriate (as in, we have done due diligence), or perhaps it could mean sufficient (as in, we have due cause to be thankful). And because the phrase is an idiom, its logic can be loose.'

Oxford dictionary is not a primary source, and if I'm not mistaken, they subscribe to the descriptive persuasion, i.e. collecting lexemes as they are in use, especially the online version, and others use it as prescriptive source.

All I see is "I always thought it was make do, because that fits better into my primary vocabulary and I don't speak French so I don't know how to pronounce dew, I mean do, err I mean ... that's just like your opinion, man".

I liked the comment noting the uptick (up take?) of make-do after WW2 much better -- which coincided with the invasion of often underedumacated Americans into Europe.

Here's a nice quote

> ... which shows how careful the Poet was to make due provision for his amendment.

If you had met due dilligence and followed through from the ngram search I linked before, you'd find plenty more sources from before 1660 like that, one with make do from 1660, and plenty american usage after 1945.

Stress being on where - and not only but also on when. Due is from times when French was hip and foxy at the court royal. I'm sure you can tell many first hand tales about that. Wherever in the many different English speaking parts of the world you are.

edit: more to the point, "dues" is pronounced "doos" in one dialect or another, I assure you. This is because it has nothing to do with "mountain dew".

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