Grammar Moses: If your pants are too loose, you might lose them

New subscriber Patricia Casale (please welcome her aboard, everyone) was wondering whether I've ever addressed the vexing issue of when people add an extra "O" to the verb "lose."

Because I'm all about reader retention and because I've been seeing a lot of this lately in social media - where spelling, grammar, good sense and social mores are doomed to a fiery extinction - I'll explore this idea a bit today.

"In the last two days I have seen this issue at least three to four times: 'Loose vs. Lose!'," Patricia wrote. "On TV news: 'Biden Looses in NH.' In a novel: 'I hated loosing ...' In a tweet: "It is sad to have loosed someone so young."

Misspellings worm their way into my nightmares, but I have yet to see "lost" tortured in quite this way.

Patricia wonders whether she is "loosing" her mind.

First, if you Googlify an answer to the question of when to use "lose" and when to use "loose," you'll get oversimplified answers for the most part. That's why you have me.

What few people seem to realize is that there is a verb form of "loose," which rhymes with "moose." It means "to release."

Let's get this out of the way first:

You can "loose" the hounds by releasing their leashes.

You can "loose" a quiver of arrows.

You can "loose" your bowels. But please hold it until you're done reading this.

"Loose" as a verb is a rather archaic usage. The real problem today is that many people don't seem to know the difference in spelling between the adjective "loose" (again, rhymes with "moose") and the verb "lose" (rhymes with "booze"), which means "to be deprived of or to no longer have."

You can have loose pants, loose morals, loose gravel on the bike path (look out!), a loose bolt on the drive shaft of your lawn mower (really look out!), a loose tongue, a loose-knit group of friends, loose-leaf notebook paper, a loose cannon for a co-worker and plenty of loose ends.

But too often we see "loose" used as a misspelling of the verb "lose," as Patricia points out.

How do we solve this problem? With a mnemonic, of course.

My mom liked to tell me that I was as "loose as a goose."

She was wrong, of course, because I was usually wound tighter than a 10-year-old's wristwatch. But for the purposes of a mnemonic, reminding yourself that "loose" rhymes with "goose" ought to do the trick.

POOP

I got a lot of response to last weekend's column on workplace jargon. It seems many of you are beset by it. This must be a driving force behind early retirement.

As I write this, I've just gotten out of one of those jargon-filled meetings that once caused me to lapse into comas. I'm better now. I feel like I'm swimming in the same direction as others in the room.

But Phil Hall, our manager of digital technology, a man whose brain would not fit into a state smaller than Illinois, raised a bit of jargon I'd never heard before.

It was an uncharacteristically analog idiom.

I don't remember exactly what he was talking about, but he was referring to something so basic that we would do it without thinking about it.

"That's putting on our pants," he said.

And that's the point in the meeting when I started taking notes.

If you're looking for a mnemonic for that, think POOP.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.