IS
(from "An
American Rants: The Anti-Truth" by Joseph C. Hinson)
As a matter of convenience and a public service to boot, I include the dictionary definition of the word "is."
is (¹z) v. Third person singular present indicative
of be. [Middle English, from Old English. See es- below.]
be (b¶) v. First and third person singular
past indicative was (w¾z, w¼z; w
z when unstressed), second
person singular and plural and first and third person plural past indicative
were (wûr), past subjunctive were, past participle been (b¹n),
present participle be·ing (b¶¹ng), first person singular
present indicative am (²m), second person singular and plural and
first and third person plural present indicative are (är), third person
singular present indicative is (¹z), present subjunctive be. --intr.
1. To exist in actuality; have life or reality: I think, therefore I am.
2.a. To occupy a specified position: The food is on the table. b. To remain
in a certain state or situation undisturbed, untouched, or unmolested:
Let the children be. 3. To take place; occur: The test was yesterday. 4.
To go or come: Have you ever been to Italy? Have you been home recently?
5. Usage Problem. Used as a copula in such senses as: a. To equal in identity:
To be a Christian was to be a Roman (James Bryce). b. To have a specified
significance: A is excellent, C is passing. Let n be the unknown quantity.
c. To belong to a specified class or group: The human being is a primate.
d. To have or show a specified quality or characteristic: She is lovely.
All men are mortal. e. To seem to consist or be made of: The yard is all
snow. He is all bluff and no bite. 6. To belong; befall: Peace be unto
you. Woe is me. --aux. 1. Used with the past participle of a transitive
verb to form the passive voice: The mayoral election is held annually.
2. Used with the present participle of a verb to express a continuing action:
We are working to improve housing conditions. 3. Used with the infinitive
of a verb to express intention, obligation, or future action: She was to
call before she left. You are to make the necessary changes. 4. Archaic.
Used with the past participle of certain intransitive verbs to form the
perfect tense: Where be those roses gone which sweetened so our eyes?
(Philip Sidney). [Middle English ben, from Old English b¶on; see bheu
-
below. See am1, is, etc. for links to other Indo-European roots.]
SYNONYMS: be, breathe, exist, live, subsist. The central
meaning shared by these verbs is to have life or reality: Her parents
are no more. A nicer person has never breathed. He is one of the worst
actors who ever existed. Human beings cannot live without food and water.
The benevolence subsisting in her character draws her friends closer to
her.
USAGE NOTE: Traditional grammar requires the nominative
form of the pronoun in the predicate of the verb be: It is I (not me);
That must be they (not them), and so forth. Even literate speakers of Modern
English have found the rule difficult to conform to, but the stigmatization
of It is me is by now so deeply lodged among the canons of correctness
that there is little likelihood that the construction will ever be entirely
acceptable in formal writing. Adherence to the traditional rule in informal
speech, however, has come to sound increasingly pedantic, and begins to
sound absurd when the verb is contracted, as in It's we. · The traditional
rule creates particular problems when the pronoun following be also functions
as the object of a verb or preposition in a relative clause, as in It is
not them/they that we have in mind when we talk about crime in the streets
nowadays, where the plural pronoun serves as both the predicate of is and
the object of have. In this example, 57 percent of the Usage Panel preferred
the nominative form they, 33 percent preferred the accusative them, and
10 percent accepted both versions. But H.W. Fowler, like other authorities,
argued that the use of the nominative here is an error caused by the temptation
. . . to assume, perhaps from hearing It is me corrected to It is I, that
a subjective [nominative] case cannot be wrong after the verb to be. Writers
can usually find a way to avoid this problem: They are not the ones we
have in mind, We have someone else in mind, and so on. See Usage Note at
I1, we.
es-. Important derivatives are: am1, is, yes,
soothe, sin1, essence, absent, interest, present1, proud.
es-. To be. 1. Athematic first person singular form
*es-mi. AM1, from Old English eam, eom, am, from Germanic *izm(i). 2. Athematic
third person singular form *es-ti. IS, from Old English is, is, from Germanic
*ist(i). 3. Optative stem *sº-. YES, from Old English g¶se, yes,
(g¶a, yea; see i- ÿ sºe), from sºe, may it be (so),
from Germanic *sijai-. 4. Participial form *sont-, being, existing, hence
real, true. a. SOOTH, SOOTHE, from Old English s½th, true, from
Germanic *santhaz; b. suffixed (collective) zero-grade form *söt-y³,
that which is. SIN1, from Old English synn, sin, from Germanic *sun(d)j½,
sin (< it is true, the sin is real); c. SUTTEE; BODHISATTVA, SATYAGRAHA,
from Sanskrit sat-, sant-, existing, true, virtuous. 5. Basic form *es-.
ENTITY, ESSENCE; ABSENT, (IMPROVE), INTEREST, OSSIA, PRESENT1, (PRESENT2),
PROUD, (QUINTESSENCE), (REPRESENT), from Latin esse, to
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