MetaChat - "with whoever you want to be with" OR "with whomever you want to be with"?

I think it's "with whomever you want to be".

And a good discussion of lay/lie is here: http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/grammar/archive/lielay01.html

posted by gaspode 21 April | 11:39

Here, rather.

posted by gaspode 21 April | 11:39

Whomever. But I'd never say that aloud.

I've given up on getting lie/lay right.

posted by Specklet 21 April | 11:41

whomever: my understanding is the when the object is referred to, it's whom. .when the subject is referred to, it's who.

Lay: To lay something down. . .in the Grateful Dead tune, "To Lay Me Down," Jerry has to be referring to another person, a lover, whom he wants to be layed down by.

Lie: . ..to lie down, without being layed down. I suppose one can lie down and get layed. Or one can get layed and lie about it.

I'll be over here.

posted by danf 21 April | 11:41

Now, see, my high school teacher would always say, to "lay" was to have sex. I can still see her doing the hand gesture (two hand people on top of each other) while saying, "You didn't really LAY on the beach, did you?"

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 21 April | 11:44

"with whomever you want to be with"
Whomever, because "with x" requires x to be in the objective case. These days, "whom" constructions sound a little bit fussy, though.

lay/lie is a transitive/intransitive distinction. You lay the book on the table (transitive; has an object), but you lie down (intransitive).

Confusion arises because the simple past of "lie" is "lay". "He lay down on the bed" is an intransitive act in the past.

The past of transitive "lay" is "laid", as in, "He laid the book on the table."

Anyone that really, seriously, deeply cares about this is crazy, though.

posted by Wolfdog 21 April | 11:44

They're both archaic usages. Forget them. Use "who" and "lay", unless you're doing some very formal writing.

posted by agropyron 21 April | 11:46

Huh, I use "whom" in speech all the time. But then again, when I'm writing properly, I also care about split infinitives, which don't seem to be a big deal in this country. hrrrrmmm.

posted by gaspode 21 April | 11:49

"with whoever you want to be with" OR "with whomever you want to be with"?

Need complete sentence example to tell you for sure, please. (I am "Mr Strunk-N-White," despite the sentence preceding sentense fragment.)

posted by shane 21 April | 11:51

"Lie" isn't archaic, and just as fussing too much over "whom" will get you pegged as pedantic, saying things like "I'm going to lay down here" will get you pegged as possibly a little undereducated, at least around here. It's all, ultimately, pretty arbitrary, and word choice is a matter of personal style, but you should know what kind of perceptions it'll cause.

posted by Wolfdog 21 April | 11:52

Thanks, all.

Shane, full sentence is "I do hope you find happiness with whomever you want to be." Correct?

posted by dobbs 21 April | 11:55

A few years ago, I captained a rec league soccer team, and I'd be the guy shouting "Who's got whom? Who's got whom?" when defending set plays. Strangely enough, it often really unnerved the opponents.

One time, though, I unnerved this one dude who fouled me in retaliation for my having muscled him off the ball by saying, "It's okay, I love you."

He got up in my face immediately, all, "What?"

"I said I love you. Like in a Gandhi way, you know, you're okay, I'm okay, I love you. Though if you want to take it a step further, we might be able to make it work."

What he said next got him a red card and a two-game suspension.

posted by Hugh Janus 21 April | 11:55

saying things like "I'm going to lay down here" will get you pegged as possibly a little undereducated, at least around here.

Huh. I wonder how many times I've been pegged as undereducated due to that. (Possibly just now?)

posted by agropyron 21 April | 12:01

"And if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with" has always bothered me.

posted by Eideteker 21 April | 12:01

"I do hope you find happiness with whomever you want to be."
I think you still want "with" at the very end of that. "...whomever you want to be with", not "...whomever you want to be."

I would enjoy seeing some anti-preposition-at-the-end-of-the-sentence-ists restructure that one.

posted by Wolfdog 21 April | 12:02

It's perfect as is; a second 'with' would be redundant.

posted by Miko 21 April | 12:06

No, it's not, and the presence or absence of the final "with" changes the meaning significantly.

The person I want to be with is generally not the same as the person I want to be.

posted by Wolfdog 21 April | 12:09

I do hope you find happiness with whomever you want.

posted by Hugh Janus 21 April | 12:10

Thanks. I'll go with Hugh Janus' last suggestion.

posted by dobbs 21 April | 12:12

Hugh's version is good.

posted by Wolfdog 21 April | 12:13

2 withs.

I hope you find happiness with person X where person X is whomever you want to be with.

Whomever because it's "you want to be with whomever" and it moves up to "whomever you want to be with". Since it starts in the prepositional phrase ("with whomever"), it gets objective case (you would say "with her" not "with she"), therefore 'whom'. Of course, this rule is dying out, and most people probably wouldn't SAY 'whomever,' though it's still proper to write it in formal usage.

I could draw you a sentence tree if you want. Please, put my linguistic training to use!

posted by heatherann 21 April | 12:43

whomever--and never 2 "with"s. "with whomever you want to be" or "whomever you want to be with" So many people use whoever that it's not really a big deal anymore.

and i always think of lay for things, and lie for people.
I lay this book on the table so that you can pick it up later as you walk by.
I lie down to sleep around 2 am each night.
The tablecloth was laid lengthwise with a horizontal runner laid on top of that.
She lies on the bearskin rug, with her nightgown spread out.

posted by amberglow 21 April | 13:33

Here's the who/whom shortcut.

In your head, replace the who/whom with a prounoun -- she or her. If the correct pronoun is 'she' (ends in a vowel), use 'who' (ends in a vowel). If the correct pronoun is 'her' (ends in a consonant), use 'whom' (ends in a consonant).

I still sometimes use lay/lie interchangeably, but that's mostly because my transient drawl sometimes steers me away from "I" sounds.

I don't think whom is archaic, though, and I vote we keep it now that you all know when to use it.

posted by mudpuppie 21 April | 13:40

Shane, full sentence is "I do hope you find happiness with whomever you want to be." Correct?

DING! It's a winner, I think. The fact that whomever follows with is a clear giveaway.

If you're ultra-picky, it's a slightly confusing sentence, though, because, well... "whomever you want to be"..? She wants to be someone other than herself?!
;-)

I forget how the rule goes if it were "I do hope you find happiness with whomever gives you joy." After all, whomever is the object of with, but also the subject of gives you joy. In that case we cheat by saying "I hope you find happiness with someone special."

You picked a conundrum of a sentence!

"This is the kind of impertinence up with which I shall not put."
-Churchill.

posted by shane 21 April | 13:46

I use a trick similar to pup's, only I substitute he/who, (both ending in vowels) and him/whom (both ending in m).

It's an interesting sentence, as shane points out. I wouldn't mind seeing it and some variants diagrammed.

posted by Miko 21 April | 13:48

One time, though, I unnerved this one dude who fouled me in retaliation for my having muscled him off the ball by saying, "It's okay, I love you."

Haha, Hugh, that's great. It reminds of a story I read in the New Yorker recently - the boy in the story says bizarre things during basketball games and it really fucks with the opponent.

I can't believe I found that link - the only thing I could remember was that the Salton Sea had something to do with it.

posted by mullacc 21 April | 13:55

In college a few friends and I were the four horsemen of the field hockey stands. We all dated women on the team, and we showed up to every home game wearing team kilts, with pots and pans and horns and combat boots and full roster lists, which we would check out during warmups, matching names to numbers to faces, seeing who their top players were: scouting.

Then during the game when they'd get the ball on a breakaway, right before the shot, one of us would yell something like "Betty Scrooder supports the Contras!" or "Don't trust Alicia Koller with your lunch money!"

That shit works, yo!

posted by Hugh Janus 21 April | 14:10

whomever--and never 2 "with"s. "with whomever you want to be" or "whomever you want to be with" So many people use whoever that it's not really a big deal anymore.

No. Those phrases are not equivalent.

I hope you are happy with [whomever you want to be with].

I hope you are happy with [whomever you want to be].

I hope you are happy with her.

"Her" can replace both of the phrases in square brackets. In the first, you want to BE whomever ("her"). In the second, you want to be WITH whomever ("her").

I forget how the rule goes if it were "I do hope you find happiness with whomever gives you joy." After all, whomever is the object of with, but also the subject of gives you joy.

There it would be "whoever" because it gets nominative case by virtue of being the subject of the embedded sentence ("whoever gives you joy"), the whole of which is the subject of "with". But yes, at that point, cheat and say "I hope you're happy with what's-her-face, yo."

posted by heatherann 21 April | 14:56

21 April 2006