“I don’t do cider,” the woman said from her stool, “but I do love this.” I heard the comment from my assigned seat at the cidery, and was reminded of my casual interest in the conflation of the verbs “do,” and “have.” This happens often in the coffee shop in my neighborhood; I will often listen with interest to the ways in which the patrons review and choose the various beverages offered there. The customer may ask questions about the offerings — what is in the Peach Cortado, and the Cortado/Macchiato — and will then say, “I’ll do The Awakening.” But whatever the choice may be, the patron is likely to say that he or she will “do” it.
My interest in words keeps me engaged in the observation of the many ways in which they are used. Years ago, I heard a man use a word that was common to him, and completely unfamiliar to me. We worked at the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Madison, Indiana. He was a personnel recruiter and I was an artist and we shared a large, open cubicle. I could hear him on the phone, qualifying power plant electrical workers, and he could hear my automatic labeling machine chugging out tags to be placed on the graphs I was producing. In a casual conversation, he used a word; I asked him to define it, and when he did, I asked him to find it in the dictionary. He could not, for this college graduate did not know that the word he pronounced, “fleem,” was spelled “phlegm.”
I listen to a program on National Public Radio called “A Way With Words,” hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette. They review and discuss the many ways that words are used, including etymology, differences by regions and expressions common to geographic areas. A man from Southern Florida told me of an expression used by his mother — a word I’d not heard before — and a few months later, I heard Grant and Martha discuss and define the word, and name the region of the country where it was most commonly used, the region that was home to the man and his mother.
At the cidery I frequent, those unfamiliar with the offerings are offered the opportunity to taste them before ordering. People will ask to “try” the Sunset Tart Cherry before they decide to “do” it, a pattern of behavior and word usage that is duplicated in the coffee shop. My unscientific observation of this behavior has identified a certain demographic for those who are “doing,” versus those who are “having,” a demographic that tends to skew about 40 years younger than the observer in the corner (me). And words evolve; the verbs “do” (to perform; to act; to accomplish), and “have” (to possess, own or hold; experience or undergo) though not usually interchangeable, are being used as if they were, at least in the coffee shop and cidery that I frequent.
Perhaps the change is tied to the ways in which the two words differ in pronunciation: the short spit of “do” is more muscular and affirming, while the breathier “have” sounds less sure. This is idle, unscientific speculation, of course, but young people “do” and coots and codgers like me, “have.” Which seems backward: I should be applying muscle to my order, not breathily making my selection. But the change is here, and I plan to relax into the future, having what I choose and listening to what others are doing. And at the cidery, as I drank my Dry, the woman decided to “do” a Semi-Sweet.