Anticipating highly

BBC News has today spoken of "a highly anticipated novel". This is, in terms of proper English, a very poor phrase.

Over and over again well accredited pedants have pointed out that the term 'anticipate' does not mean 'await' or 'expect'*, but to 'take appropriate action in advance of an event'.

If you are wearing a cyclist's helmet when you swerve in the road and fall to the ground, you will be glad that you donned that helmet in anticipation of a possible accident. If you go to meet the 2.45 train because you think your friend will be arriving on it, and he/she does indeed do so, you have anticipated his/her arrival. If you successfully set a mole trap, you have anticipated the capture of a mole.

The term is made up of two Latin elements; first ante = before; and secondly capere = to catch. The idea is 'catching in advance'. If you manage to catch what you set out to catch, you have anticipated it. If you fail to catch it, you have failed to anticipate it: failure is not anticipation, any more than hoping for something guarantees that you will get it. Anticipate does not mean mere 'hope', nor does it mean the vague 'look forward to'. It implies success. Anticipation can therefore, by definition, not fail - though (paradoxical as it may sound) you can successfully anticipate failure.

But the pedant's insistance on 'correct' usage is pretty well vain. Modern dictionaries ('descriptive' rather than 'prescriptive' ones) merely record common errors without comment, perhaps on the principle that 'if it already appears in print, it's too late to wish it hadn't'. Much poor English, as well as much false information, appears in print: do we have to accept it all as valid ?

And while we are about it, just look again at that phrase 'highly anticipated', and consider it for a moment. There are indeed contexts in which 'highly' can mean 'much' or 'very' - contexts in which the metaphor of 'height' still has a resonance: 'highly praised', 'highly coloured', 'highly respected', for instance. But 'highly anticipated' ? Uggh ! What's wrong with 'eagerly awaited' ?

* Though any well accredited pedant will be able to tell you that the very verb 'expect' essentially means to 'go on waiting until you actually see something you think is going to happen'. Its Latin elements are spectare = to look intently; with the prefix ex- implying (in this context) 'until it happens'.

Anticipating highly