What's the Difference? #3

Your illustrious narrator (See illustration, pg. 6) has left this type of question unanswered for a vast amount of time. Only the most persistent and erudite scholars of ancient history can even entertain a dim hope of locating the last one before this. You, on the other hand, could simply look right here. It should be noted, though, that said narrator has a perfectly good excuse for his supposed lassitude.: the dog ate his homework. No, wait, maybe it was the cat and his newspaper or a flock of hungry mice and his cumberbun. Be that as it may, something ate something, and that's all there is to it.

To refresh your fading memories, each of these articles contains one set of differences that is a rule and another that is a shade of meaning. Let's try that idea again.

Well and Good

"Why do you people think you are here?" a frustrated teacher of mine said to his eleventh-grade English class.

"So we can learn to speak well English good," replied an alert student, thereby summing up the difference between the two words in a simple declarative sentence. No, seriously, the difference between the two words is the polar opposite of what the student said.

Very simply, "good" is an adjective, for all intents and purposes. There is a major exception, which we will get to in a bit. Generally speaking, though the purpose of "good" is to modify a noun. For example, Lucy Van Pelt's favorite exclamation, "Good grief!" refers only to that grief (a noun) which is good. In all my years of hardly paying attention to the Peanuts comic strip, I have never seen Lucy exclaim "Well grief!" To have done so would have doubtlessly been a greater affront to her sense of propriety than actually holding the football.

Speaking of footballs and the kicking thereof, a player who put the ball squarely between the uprights could be credited with a well-placed kick, "place" in this instance being a verb. As a result, the adverb, "well" would be the correct modifier. To say the athlete made a good-placed kick would appear to put the speaker at an even lower level of erudition than the kicker's "college educated" teammates.

As mentioned earlier, there is a glaring exception to this rule and, let's face it, it's just about the entire source of confusion regarding the two words.

Feeling Good and Feeling Well

I have heard people say of both words that only one is correct in describing a benign state of being, while the other should be consigned to describing the sense of touch only. This is altogether wrong.

Only a yegg would care about the acuity of his fingertips enough to comment on it, probably to a professional colleague. In fact, both "feeling good" and "feeling well" are correct in describing the state of being.

That said, there is somewhat of a difference between those two. "Feeling good" is most typically associated with a mood, whether it comes from a natural state of euphoria or an induced one, as noted in J.B. Lenoir's song, Feeling good.

"Feeling well," on the other hand, is more or less associated with health, although often in the negative. For example, consider the classic saying, "I don't feel well," that has set the stage for so many days off from work.

Note there is no parallel between feeling and doing. If you are successful, you are doing well, not doing good. True, Shakespeare had occasion to mention "the good that men do" in his play, Julius Caesar, but, in that instance, "good" was functioning as a noun, not a modifier. Oh, and, by the way, a yegg is someone who earns his keep by cracking safes.

I hope this clears up at least some of the confusion between these two words.

Cooperation and Assistance

The two words are very closely related. When a basketball player cooperates with the shooter by passing him the ball, he is credited with an assist, not a cooperation.

In other usages, there is a significant difference between the two words. People on the dole receive public assistance, rather than public cooperation.

Even though the two words are similar, if not congruent, I have found, in my post-retirement career, I need to be careful which of them I use.

Despite your narrator's meager foray into comedy in an earlier examination of how to write a business letter, there are a number of actual conventions that can be useful to the letter writer. Among them is the idea of thanking the reader at the end of the letter. Here is where it becomes very important to be mindful of the difference between the words.

If the client I am writing the letter for genuinely needs a favor, it is nothing short of arrogant to thank the reader for his or her anticipated cooperation. Maybe that person does not want to cooperate, in which case it is highly presumptuous of the writer to presume otherwise.

If, after stating the client's case, I close with "Thank you for your anticipated assistance," I am still seeking the same boon, but doing so with the attitude of someone asking for a reasonable favor, rather than dictating terms. That makes a huge difference.

From time to time my job requires me to write business letters to complete jerks, who have already performed some act of malfeasance on the client and for which the letter is seeking redress. In a case like that, "assistance" conveys a sense of weakness, which the jerk recipient is very likely to pick up on. "Cooperation," though, bespeaks the iron fist in the velvet glove that the jerk is likely to understand, at least on a visceral level.

All kidding from the beginning of this article aside, I do hope to post more of these articles, sooner rather than later. I would very much like to get your suggestions for which sets of words I should tackle. That particularly applies to shades of meaning.

In closing, let me thank you for your kind assistance, unless you have obtained the status of Fully-Qualified Jerk, in which case, I mean your expected cooperation.

Sincerely, Yeggs Benedict (My new temporary nom de plume)

Sources

Woe is I, Patricia T. O'Connor

Urbandictionary.com

Own experience