{"id":49188,"date":"2020-11-14T11:16:23","date_gmt":"2020-11-14T16:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=49188"},"modified":"2020-11-14T11:19:35","modified_gmt":"2020-11-14T16:19:35","slug":"outcoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=49188","title":{"rendered":"Outcoming"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wikipedia entry for Gritty<\/a>, cited in my post \"Libert\u00e9, \u00c9galit\u00e9, Gritt\u00e9<\/a>\", used the modifier \"outcoming\" [emphasis added]<\/em>:<\/p>\n

When Philadelphia played an outsized role in determining the 2020 presidential election, social media users depicted Gritty, as the city personified, defeating outcoming<\/strong> incumbent Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

Philip Anderson quickly objected<\/a> in the comments:<\/p>\n

But \u201coutcoming\u201d (as an adjective) in the Wikipedia quote? Incoming or outgoing, surely?<\/span><\/p>\n

Some discussion ensued, with opinions on several sides of the question.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The usage did seem odd to me at first — though on reflection it makes sense, since \"outgoing\" would imply a point of view inside whatever region the going-thing is leaving, while \"outcoming\" suggests that we're outside that region. And surely we (and the wikipedia writer) are outside the American presidency?<\/p>\n

But logic aside, is \"outcoming\" even a word?<\/p>\n

The OED and MW both have entries for all four preposition+participle combinations: incoming, ingoing, outcoming, outgoing<\/em>. You won't be surprised to learn that the frequencies are very different, with Philip's favorites incoming<\/em> and outgoing<\/em> much more common than the other two. COCA<\/a> counts:<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
incoming<\/td>\n7541<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ingoing<\/td>\n12<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
outcoming<\/td>\n4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
outgoing<\/td>\n3812<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

But some examples of the two infrequent modifiers seem unproblematic, like this from Physics Today<\/em> in 1994:<\/p>\n

Not only did Brockhouse design a valuable instrument, but he made the mental leap into reciprocal space and suggested operating the instrument to collect only data points corresponding to a fixed value of Q, the difference in wavevector (k i – k f) between the ingoing and outcoming neutrons.<\/span><\/p>\n

That choice appropriately situates the observer's point of view outside the region that the neutrons are going into and coming out of (rather than coming into and going out of…).<\/p>\n

So frequency of usage is on Philip's side, but logic and non-quantitative lexicography are on the side of the Wikipedia writer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wikipedia entry for Gritty, cited in my post \"Libert\u00e9, \u00c9galit\u00e9, Gritt\u00e9\", used the modifier \"outcoming\" [emphasis added]: When Philadelphia played an outsized role in determining the 2020 presidential election, social media users depicted Gritty, as the city personified, defeating outcoming incumbent Donald Trump. Philip Anderson quickly objected in the comments: But \u201coutcoming\u201d (as an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words-words-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49188"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49194,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49188\/revisions\/49194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}