grammando

English

Etymology

Blend of gram(mar) +‎ (com)mando; possibly coined by, and probably first popularized by, Lizzie Skurnick in 2012, via her feature “That Should Be a Word” in the New York Times Magazine.

Noun

grammando (plural grammandos)

1. Synonym of grammar police.
   • 2024, Anne Curzan, Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words, Crown, →ISBN, page viii-ix:

     you probably have an inner grammando […] One who constantly corrects others’ linguistic mistakes. […] There’s another new word—wordie—that captures the alternative to being a grammando. Added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2018, wordie describes someone who delights in language’s shifting landscape. Wordies know the language rules and where they come from, and then they make informed calls about whether or not to follow the rule in a given context. […] you almost certainly have an inner wordie who lives alongside your inner grammando. Welcome to my world! When I notice a new species in the language out in the wild (metaphorically speaking) and have an urge to stamp it out—that’s my inner grammando talking. When I delight in learning from young people about the rules of texting and new slang, my inner wordie has the upper hand. We all have our language peeves—those bits of language that grate on our nerves and that make us want to pull out a red pen while reading or stop someone midsentence to go grammando on them. (Yes, them—see chapter 18 for an explanation of how they can be singular.) And the question at any one of these peevey moments is whether to let our inner grammando say anything or let our inner wordie carry the day.