by What’s the issue?
Which of these two sentences do you think is correct? Or do you think both are? A teaching style which homes in on what is important for each pupil. Or A teaching style which hones in on what is important for each pupil. Where you live in the English-speaking world will affect your opinion. Which also means that whichever version you use, someone somewhere is likely to consider it wrong. (And if they are of the ‘grammar’ pedantry persuasion, to take great delight in doing so.) (But if you are not a British English speaker, the chances are that you’ll plump for the second one.)A handful of examples
HomeOnce again the media homed in on Tyrannosaurus.American Scientist
DRUG dealers were today warned that the police were homing in on them after a man caught with drugs worth £26,000 was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail.Bolton Evening News (UK) Hone
The writer Malcolm Hulke really seems to be honing in on the anxieties of the time, by focusing on the pollution of the planet and leaving the earth uninhabitable.The Independent blog (UK).
Yes, they had those rhetorically brilliant 1858 debates, but the election of 1860, waged in a fiercely divided country, also honed in on the candidates’ appearances [sic].Boston Globe.
Tapas menu
- Hone in seems to be as widely used as home in, if not more widely.
- If you use hone in, you are (globally) in the majority, but several reputable sources view it as a mistake.
- For many people, however, it is the only correct version, and makes sense semantically.
- Both phrasal verbs can be seen as ‘skunked’, i.e. they will offend someone’s linguistic sense of smell, so they might be best avoided.
- There is an argument that hone in is a separate development, not a mistake.
- Users of each version can easily find justifications for it – specious or otherwise, selon votre goût.
À la carte menu
Read on …Worldwide, more people use hone in than home in.
A US copywriter spotted ‘home in’ in a blog of mine, and kindly pointed out what she thought was a typo. She was surprised when I told her it was intentional. In a straw poll in her office – this was in the US, remember – everyone agreed hone was the only correct version. That surprised me. I was familiar with the ‘home in’ version, whose meaning has always seemed self-evident to me: I think of a homing pigeon returning to a specific place, or a missile homing in on its target, and therefore to home in on something is to target it or pinpoint it (or, as the ODO definition goes, ‘Move or be aimed towards (a target or destination) with great accuracy’). Consequently, as a British English speaker, I have occasionally winced when, for example, British HR-obots talked about ‘honing in on’ a particular point or issue. Shurely shome mishtake, I thought, a misinterpretation, a malapropism, an eggcorn. I first posted on this topic about 18 months ago, and since then, having looked at more data, I am obliged to change my mind. For it seems that the home in version is a) less frequent across all varieties of English and b) shows signs of being ousted even in British English by the hone in version. Some figures The figures I mention do not show exactly the same picture. Nevertheless … 1 I looked in the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), which consists of about 2.6 billion words of data from US, British and several other varieties of English. (Or, to indicate its vast size another way, over 112 million sentences of English.) I looked for in + on after the lemmas home and hone (i.e. all forms, home, homes, homed, homing, hone, etc.). Overall, hone in on is slightly more frequent, with 700 instances against 655. Looking at regional variation within those figures gives us this table:| Regional variety | home in on | hone in on |
| British English | 283 | 67 |
| American English | 254 | 419 |
| unknown | 57 | 69 |
| Australian English | 16 | 37 |
| Irish English | 13 | 47 |
| South African English | 8 | 6 |
| New Zealand English | 6 | 12 |
| East Asian English | 6 | 8 |
| Canadian English | 5 | 30 |
| Indian English | 4 | 3 |
| Caribbean English | 3 | 2 |
| TOTALS | 655 | 700 |
| All | US | CAN | GB | ||
| HOMING IN ON | 122 | 29 | 3 | 45 | |
| HOMED IN ON | 115 | 20 | 7 | 37 | |
| HOMES IN ON | 29 | 3 | 1 | 13 | |
| HOME IN ON | 17 | 2 | 1 | 8 | |
| TOTAL | 283 | 54 | 12 | 103 |
| ALL | US | CA | GB | ||
| HONE IN ON | 411 | 124 | 42 | 73 | |
| HONING IN ON | 154 | 42 | 20 | 31 | |
| HONED IN ON | 145 | 43 | 14 | 27 | |
| HONES IN ON | 76 | 20 | 5 | 12 | |
| TOTAL | 786 | 229 | 81 | 143 |
But hone in on just doesn’t make sense! It’s obviously a crass mistake!!
Mmmmm. It clearly does make sense to very many people, including George Bush.**- For it to be a mistake, it would have to be clear that home in on was well established before the arrival of hone in on. That is not indisputably so, as Mark Liberman suggested in some detail a while ago.
- The sense development of home in on is fairly clear (see OED citations at the end), but what of hone in on? After all, the core meaning of hone is “to sharpen a blade’ (1788), so what has that got to do with ‘focussing on something’?
What do dictionaries and usage guides say?
A couple of dictionaries list hone in on with no comment, but several others consider it a mistake. Several style guides take that same view; some set great store by the physical meaning of hone, in a way that comes close to being the etymological fallacy. Oxford Dictionaries Online in both World English and US versions notes at home in on that hone is quite common in mainstream US writing, but that many people still consider it a mistake, as do Collins and freedictionary.com. Macmillan lists it with no comment.- The OED makes no bones about calling hone in the result of ‘folk etymology’.
- My revised (4th) edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage covers similar territory to this blog more briefly, but suggests avoiding either word altogether.
- Merriam-Webster notes the existence of hone in and suggests that it ‘seems to have become established in American usage’. The American Heritage College Dictionary (2004) gives ‘to direct one’s attention; focus’ as a meaning of hone in.
- Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage, however, considers it unequivocally wrong.
- The Guardian style guide notes, somewhat acidly, ‘home in on, not hone in on, which suggests you need to hone your writing skills.’ Neither The Economist nor The Telegraph guides mentions it.
- The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edn., notes: ‘home in. This phrase is frequently misrendered hone in. (Hone means ‘to sharpen.) Home in refers to what homing pigeons do; the meaning is ‘to come closer and closer to a target.’
- The Merriam-Webster Concise Dictionary of English Usage charts the development of hone in on, but notes that ‘If you use it, you should be aware that some people will think that you have made a mistake.’
So…? What should I do?
The hone in variant has been around for half a century. It is used in many parts of the Anglosphere. As discussed, some dictionaries list it without comment, while others warn against it, as do many usage and style manuals. If you use it, you are unlikely to be misunderstood. However, if you do use it, bear in mind that some people will consider it a mistake, and therefore conclude that you can’t use English ‘correctly’. And others will come to the same conclusion if you use home in. To steer clear of the problem, why not use focus on, concentrate on, zero in on, or any other synonym that suits your context?** From Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. ‘An issue looming on the usage horizon is the propriety of the phrase hone in on. George Bush’s use of this phrase in the 1980 presidential campaign (he talked of ‘honing in on the issues’) caught the critical eye of political columnist Mary McCrory, and her comments on it were noted, approved, and expanded by William Safire. Safire observed that hone in on is a confused variant of home in on, and there seems to be little doubt that he was right. . . . Our first example of home in on is from 1951, in a context having to do with aviation. Our earliest record of its figurative use is from 1956. We did not encounter hone in on until George Bush used it in 1980. . . .’
*** OED definitions / earliest citations. (Italics in examples mine.) HOME
- a. intr. Of a homing pigeon: to fly back to its ‘home’ or loft after being released at a distant point; to arrive at the loft at the end of such a flight. Hence of any animal: to return to some specific territory or spot after having left it or having been removed from it. Freq. with to.
- intr a. Of a vessel, aircraft, missile, etc.: to move or be guided to a target or destination by use of a landmark or by means of a radio signal, detection of a heat signature, etc. Usu. with in on, or less commonly on, on to, or towards. Cf. hone v.4
- b. fig.To make something the sole object of one’s attention; to focus intently on something. Cf.hone v.4
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Hone in on just doesn’t make sense! It’s obviously a mistake!
(Please note that I am English, so that is to be expected.)
Hi, Pauline. Thanks for reading, and thanks for the comment. I think many British English speakers would agree with you. But, as I aimed to point out, many US speakers would be equally adamant that hone is the genuine article. Perhaps it’s a case of tomahto – tomayto, potayto – potahto ;-).
In all my young years in the 1940’s and 1950’s, all I ever heard was “home in on.” That was the phrase universally used, at any rate in my own experience. It meant the same thing as referred to in the many references to the example of homing pigeons that I now read in arguments for using “home,” not “hone” in this expression.
This went on for many years until people started saying “hone in on” instead. I thought those people did that because they undoubtedly had heard the expression wrongly. They were in
the minority, and I winced when I heard that.
The example of how a servo mechanism homes in on an area or position was always in my mind as the source or origin of the expression “home in on.” I think it is a shame and an injustice that the incorrect “hone in” became the most often-used phrase, but there are other wrongful usages that have cropped up over the years, too, and have become more common than the proper ones.
Thanks for your comment. Such is language “change”, Hank, I am afraid. I wince every time someone says “hone in on”, but it seems to be the norm in the US, and becoming commoner over here.
I use both, but not indiscriminately. In formal writing I’d always use home, but I *like* the special connotations of hone, as you outlined in your article, Jeremy. And why would it not make sense, given that it is understood (even if winceable to some) and therefore part of communication?? I’m sure Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Du Maurier and many others are wincing too, if they’re hanging out somewhere in the lingostratosphere. But hey, language changes, innit? As lexicographers, we know you cannae keep a usage out of a dictionary just because some yin doesnae like it
“Hone in” is simply wrong. Full stop.
Any moderately well-educated military aviator who has used direction finding equipment will validate this. Similarly, a woodworker does not “hone in” on his work. He hones it. This misuse is simply a matter of sloppiness and carelessness with the meaning of words. Words mean things.
With deference to those who point out that language evolves, common misuse of words doesn’t make them any more correct. That transition in language can be, more correctly, characterized as devolving. It just means that they have gained wider acceptance through frequent misuse, often by people who should know better.
Yes, though an American, I’m one who cringes whenever I hear this. It seems to be more common recently but it may be that I’m just more attuned, or homed in, on it.
I’ll concede that I have posted this with some amount of fear. There are likely those who will sharpshoot my post looking for errors in grammar or vocabulary. I am, after all, a mere Yank. I have undoubtedly made some simple, yet egregious, error. Feel free to point it out, if you see it. I’m always honing my language skills.
Hello, Ed
Thanks for reading the post and for your comments. I too cringe when I hear ‘hone in’ as it just seems like a mistake that has now become institutionalised in language. But, as my post points out, many American speakers think exactly the opposite.
Best regards,
J
After posting, I immediately saw an error I’d made. I’m sure someone with sharp eyes will immediately find it.