Graduate School vs. Graduate From School

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is John, and I’m calling from Fargo, North Dakota.

Hi, John. Welcome to the show.

Hi, John.

I’m a little bit older than a lot of people. I’m like 70 years old.

For the first 50 years of my life, I hear people say, you know, they graduated from college, or she graduated from high school.

Now I hear people say, she graduated high school, or he graduated college, and it just doesn’t sound right. What do you think?

Graduate, the verb, has a really interesting history that goes back to the early 16th century when graduate was a transitive verb.

It was used to speak of what the colleges or universities or schools did to the students.

It goes back to an old Latin word that means step.

We get words like grade from that or gradual, step by step.

And originally it was a transitive verb, meaning you do that to the students.

You graduate your students.

And then later it took on different meanings.

Like a student could graduate from a university or another school.

Yeah, now the from is starting to drop out.

Is that the right way?

It’s a little bit more informal, I guess, but I’m throwing in the towel on this one.

Yeah, what’s interesting to me, John, is that the older usage of something like L. Woods was graduated from California University.

The was graduated, used to be seen as the only way to say it.

And there are many grammar experts on the record kind of decrying any other form or usage of graduate to mean to matriculate from a college and so forth.

Really?

Yeah.

And so what’s happening, we’re now on the third version of graduate.

And so even the version that you prefer, the graduate from, would have been seen as wrong.

And that was at one time an abomination in the eyes of some grammarians.

But the from is disappearing, like Martha says.

I’m with Martha.

I’ve long since given up on that.

I only find a few people holding the line on it.

I find that the usage guides and the style guides are behind probably 20 or 30 years on acknowledging that this transition and this transformation has already happened.

Interestingly, recently I heard an NPR reporter dropping the from from that as well.

Yeah, it’s almost like the from is contained within the word graduate.

Yeah, it’s kind of like the word left.

Like few of us would say, I left from work and went home.

We would say, I left work.

And so graduate is more like that now, more like a verb like to leave.

Very good.

John, thank you.

I hope we’ve helped you sort this out.

You have.

Thank you.

All right.

Take care now.

Yeah, bye.

Bye-bye.

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