For free – right or wrong?

It’s easy enough to say that for free is wrong. For example on Yahoo! Answers:

Commercials, newspapers, actors, politicians, almost everywhere says “for free.” But isn’t it grammatically incorrect?

Yes, it is grammatically incorrect because “free” is not a noun. It would be correct to say, “They got in free” (used as an adverb) but not “They got in for free.”

Answers.com is more nuanced:

Is the expression for free incorrect grammar?

No, just bad for profits.

I can definitely go for that answer. I am in the business of advising people how to use English, either personally in classes or through my books. Although like most people nowadays I am a tolerant descriptivist at heart (provided that the parameters allow a common communicative standard to be maintained), I know that people who pay me good money for my advice don’t expect to be told in later life that what I have tolerated, or indeed taught actively, is ‘ungrammatical’. It is indeed bad for profits – mine as well as theirs. I also know that students, especially Spanish-speaking ones, don’t want to be told that it’s a grey area. They can handle different forms of expression in different situations; that’s obvious. But the idea that practically everybody says something but it is still widely felt to be wrong is hard for speakers of a more rigidly structured language to grasp; they just want to know what’s right and what’s wrong and who shall blame them for that? So, with such as and like, split infinitives, hopefully as a sentence adverb, for free, deferred prepositions and a few other things, caution can sometimes come close to prescription.

In my Guide to English Language Usage I try to hedge my bets. I say under hopefully:

It is also used with the meaning: It is to be hoped that. Some people object to this use but many others find it is useful to have a way of expressing a general hope rather than a personal one. Hopefully, this space flight will be as free of incident as its predecessors is different from I hope you have a pleasant flight.

and for split infinitives:

… it must be said that there is still, rightly or wrongly, a considerable feeling among English speakers that a split infinitive is wrong. Sometimes it seems natural to do so but a decision to split an infinitive deliberately should never be taken lightly.

Having said all that, however, what is actually happening with for free? It is obvious that the answer given in the first example conforms easily and perfectly to the traditional rules of grammar, and with the alternatives of They got in free (adverb) and They got in for nothing (preposition + pronoun) there is no need, traditionalists would argue, for a form that goes against the rules.

But people disobey the rules, as we know. People do say They got in for free.  I think that the explanation may lie here.

1a) How much is the entrance fee? It’s 10 euros.

1b) How much is the entrance fee? It’s free.

2a) I got in for 10 euros.

2b) I got in for nothing.

2c) I got in free.

I suggest that in I got in for free we see a confusion of 2a and 2c, following the pattern of 1a and 1b, where 10 euros and free are interchangeable. Such mental confusion is surely quite natural, and the spoken result is perfectly understandable, so I see no objection that can be made on communicative rather than formal grounds. For that reason I do not oppose the use of for free.

But there is more. I took the example of an entrance fee from the given example, but let us look at a more concrete one:

How much is that sweater?

It’s 10 euros.

What, we may ask a traditionalist grammarian, is the antecedent of the pronoun in the answer? Is it the sweater? Is the sweater 10 euros or is its price ten euros? Should the question not be correctly What’s the price of that sweater? if a grammatically logical answer is to be made? After all, in a different context the answer to the question How much is that sweater? could be 100 grams.

Finally, it is always satisfying, and almost always possible, to tie pedants up with unarguable counter-examples to their insistence. If for free is to be condemned because it consists of a preposition and an adverb, what are we to make of for ever, for good or for sure?

Comments

[Barrie England]

Can we not say that 'free', along with 'ever', 'good' and 'sure', becomes a noun by virtue of its being preceded by a preposition?

For an instance of where a split infinitive is certainly not grammatical, see, if you haven't already, Geoffrey Pullum at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2658.

[Silvertiger]

I don't think there is always a "logical" explanation for the phrases used to express concepts. In the specific case of for free, I do not believe for one second that speakers created this analogically from expressions such as "for 10 euros". I think it was deliberately concocted to sound odd and trendy but gradually lost these qualities of novelty and became the normal form for many people.

One could quote other examples such as the expression "I am like" to replace "I said". I do not think you can find a correct structure from which this twisted locution has been formed by analogy.

New generations produce new ideas and invent new speech forms with which to express them, the more different these are and the more shocking, the better, because language, as well as being a mode of communication is also a powerful discriminator between social groups.

I don't think Spanish students are alone in requiring hard and fast right-wrong linguistic judgements. I think all language learners share this desire. In the early stages of language acquisition, the last thing you want to hear is that "This is a grey area". You want to know exactly what to say in the given situation so that you can confidently say it. Later, you enjoy playing with different forms but in the beginning you need certainty.

Finally, I think the influence of the old Latin grammarians still sometimes weighs heavily on us, tempting us to think that we can somehow generate all correct phrases of the language using a set of definite rules and that any phrase that cannot be so generated must be "wrong". Language isn't like that. Language reveals certain patterns, yes, but swells its store of useful expressions by an imaginative accretion of words. Successful expressions live on and unsuccessful ones die. Grammatical correctness has little to do with either their survival or their demise.

[Valerie]

I think Barrie's got it. I was going to say that it's about functional shift, which is about English becoming more analytical. cf arguments about nouns becoming verbs. As you shift the position of the word, you change its function. 'Free' may have originally been shifted to noun position here by analogy (for nothing et al) but this kind of functional shift is not inherently 'ungrammatical'. That's not to say it may not sound odd to some people. That said, 'for free' can now surely be regarded as a lexicalised phrase.

[Peter Harvey]

We could say that 'free', 'ever', 'good' and 'sure', become nouns, or that we have compound adverbs in the way that 'out of' is a compound preposition. I don't really mind. When you're describing something you give it a name.

[B A Le Carpentier]

"For free" simply sounds wrong and stamps the perpetrator as naff.

[Peter Harvey]

You are entitled you your opinion, but many expressions about which similar things have been said in the past are now regarded as unobjectionable parts of the language.

[Mike]

It is clearly incorrect. Many people are starting to think and believe that if enough people use incorrect grammar, it becomes correct! Something being "for free" makes as much sense as something being "for expensive".

[Rich]

I wrote to the famous (now deceased) grammarian James J. Kilpatrick about this, back in 2005.

He wrote back, "You're right, of course: 'for free' is a syntactical abomination. It has been an abomination for at least 30 years.

Sincerely, James J. Kilpatrick

My own understanding of it is this: the word 'for' should precede a commodity, such as "for a doller", or, "for 25 cents", or, "for a chicken".

But the word 'free' is not a commodity. In fact, it is expressly the absence of a commodity.

You wouldn't say, "for expensive", would you? No. You wouldn't.