Hacker News Reader

Comment by shellac | Hacker News Reader

In this article ‘graft’ means corruption or similar, rather than ‘hard work’. Slightly confusing.

Graft is a funny word. It seems to come from horticulture and means "to join or unite". Then it's used as a synonym for work, especially hard work, which doesn't have an obvious relation to the horticultural use. Then there's the corruption meaning, which is a metaphor of how a parasite forms a union with its host, I presume. So if you're being metaphoric, "graft" can be used for a harmonic union and an abusive union. There aren't a lot of words like that, I think.

"Cleave" can mean both "to split apart" or "to join together".

In that vein sanction can mean approve (homologate) and it can mean punish, penalize.

According to https://www.etymonline.com/word/graft ...

graft (the horticultural concept) derives ultimately from the Greek for "stylus", after the knife used in the process, and this etymology is considered reliable.

graft (British English for your job) is not well understood but speculated to come from the word graft (meaning ditch/trench), possibly from Dutch.

graft (American English for corruption) is speculated to come from the British word for your job. It's not felt to be related to the horticultural term.

Thanks for the link, I think I'll be coming back to that site from time to time. My long time favorite dictionary is thefreedictionary.com, but with graft, for the first time the description was subpar.

There’s more than you’d think. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_contranyms

The title uses the word "soccer", which should lead you to expect the American meaning of "graft" rather than the British meaning.

Sure but it seems I'm not the only Brit who was completely unaware of the American meaning.

It’s amusing since “soccer” was British slang for association football.

I didn't realise this was an Americanism.

At least in Australia both meanings are common and it has always seemed pretty clear from the context which meaning was which.

Thanks for mentioning this. The article at least seems clear from the start it's talking about tax fraud and evasion but that headline had me expecting a very different article.

This may be another case of English speaking communities being separated by the same language.

Huh. Indeed it is. I'm American, and I did not even realize that "graft" meant "hard work" in British English.

Yeah, I'm British and I thought I knew most Americanism's, but I didn't know this one!

Interesting, I'm Australian and I understood it in the American sense. Haven't ever heard the British meaning used.

I'm a Brit and graft means hard work. I don't think I've ever heard it used in the sense of the article though - implying corruption. Graft, grafting etc (short "a") is a word I would generally associate with the north midlands (!) of England and up, ie around Derbyshire and up.

It is understood elsewhere in the UK but not used routinely. It might, say, be deployed for additional effect by someone not from northern England and imply very hard work. However, it might be pronounced in an exaggerated, imitation "generic Yorkshire" accent in which case it gets a bit complicated to explain.

...

Actually, isn't the US word "grift" rather than "graft"?

Grift means swindle, or trick, often used as a verb. Taking advantage of someone without them realizing it. Graft usually has the connotation of bribery. A con-man would be called a grifter, while a politician would be accused of graft.

Ta for the explanation.

The closest Americanism that comes to mind for this term would be "grit", which I think is a bit different as it's more about enduring hardship (or hard work) than actually working hard. I think the word "hussle" is used similarly sometimes.

I've definitely come across the word "grifter" as a synonym for someone who defrauds people ("marks") in en_US.

"Grit" is a perfectly valid en_GB word meaning the same (enduring hardship.)

Why isn't the British term spelled "graught"?

I enjoyed the tongue in cheek question, but words where "aught" sounds like "aft" are Germanic in origin (such as laughter or draught), whereas "graft" is French in origin :-)

A lot of the more unusual spellings in British English (in particular) relate to trying to distinguish words by their origin.

etymonline suggests that "graft" the horticultural term is French in its immediate origin (Greek in actual origin; the French word descends from a Greek word borrowed into Latin), but "graft" the term for a job is more likely... Dutch. It isn't related to the other graft.

This article details both the different regional definitions of graft, as well as the reasons it's spelled as it is: https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2012/01/graf...

Spoilers: US usage is always negative, Australian usage mostly matches US, British is mostly positive, India is both. Someone asks the same spelling question, and gets the answer that it is because the word was only written down in either meaning quite late.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com