Don Cram

Gerunds, verbs used as nouns, take the possessive instead of the direct object. Not, “They saw him gaining admission,” but “They saw his gaining admission.”

I came across this pair of words while reading C.S. Lewis this morning. Both, of course, derive from words for “heart.” I don’t think I’ve ever come across “enhearten” before, but I like it very much. My spell checker does not care for it.

You may hear one of our cousins from across the pond use the curious formation of a permissible kind of double negative: “I am not unaware of the situation.” It means the same thing as “I am aware of the situation,” but not quite. It is slightly more polite, expressing the smallest level of disinterest, or, at least, not full interest, and is very common. Like many things British, it is nuanced.