Sometimes while looking up a word or a grammar or usage point, I find something else interesting. Today, my copy of John Bremner’s “Words on Words” fell open to a page that contains an entry on “hand down.”
Bremner reminds us that juries hand up indictments or verdicts (a colleague told me once to think of the jury standing before the judge and reaching up to give the judge a piece of paper with the jury’s decision on it). Judges, on the other hand, hand down decisions.
This article was originally posted by the Raleigh News & Observer, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Co.; is posted here to provide continuity; and is copyright © 2011 The News & Observer Publishing Company, which reserves the right to remove this post.