Date:    Thu, 18 Jun 1998 15:30:32 +0000
<br>From:    Jim Rader <jrader[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]M-W.COM>
<br>Subject: Re: "concerning," adj.
<br>
<br>Our paper cite file has two contemporary examples of this usage,
<br>which are interesting enough to be worth quoting:
<br>
<br>"You look around," said [Chuck] Daly [basketball coach], "and we have
<br>a form of MTV basketball.  We have rookies coming into the league who
<br>are set for life before they ever play a single [NBA] game. ...We're
<br>really setting up people to leave the sport very early, which I would
<br>think would be very concerning."  (column by Joe Menzer in
<br>_Basketball Digest_, v. 21, no. 8 [June/July 1994], p. 16)
<br>
<br>Dr. Harold Jaffe, deputy director for science of the AIDS program at
<br>the Federal Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, said he would
<br>like to see the findings confirmed in a larger group exposed to the
<br>AIDS virus.  But, he said, "If it's correct, it's very concerning."
<br>(byline of Gina Kolata, _New York Times_, June 1, 1989, p. A21)
<br>
<br>I haven't tried searching this on our citation database, which would
<br>record usages that hadn't been specifically marked; I suspect the
<br>usage is salient enough that editors would have marked it.  Nor have
<br>I tried searching it on Nexis.  I assume that adverbs such as "very"
<br>are categorized by  Lexis-Nexis as "noise words," so that it would be
<br>difficult to separate adjectival uses of _concerning_ from the
<br>unsearchably large number of prepositional uses.
<br>
<br>The editor who reviewed the 1989 cite during the editing of C10
<br>questioned the label "archaic" given _concerning_ in the sense "causing
<br>concern" in W3--with good reason, to judge from what Jesse has
<br>observed.  I don't recall ever hearing or seeing it before.
<br>
<br>Jim Rader
<br>