Plenty of
Today I’m going to tell you about the expression, “plenty of.” This has two related meanings. It can either mean “a lot” or it can mean “more than enough.”
“Plenty of” goes right before your noun, and you can put that at the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence.
In today’s current events lesson, you learned that Tylenol is a brand name and acetaminophen is a generic drug name . Johnson & Johnson is the company that makes Tylenol; no other company can sell a pill called Tylenol. However, plenty of companies make acetaminophen pills. That means that many companies do that; lots of companies do that.
“Plenty of companies make acetaminophen” means “Many companies make acetaminophen.”
When drugmakers name a drug, they work with creative agencies to develop the names. Sometimes the name a drugmaker really wants sounds too much like another drug, so they have to eliminate the name they really want to use.
That’s okay. The creative agencies give the drugmakers plenty of options. They give the drugmakers a lot of options for names, so if one name doesn’t work, they can choose from plenty of other options—lots of other options.
And this is an example where “plenty of” means, “more than enough.” If you’re going to sell a product that’s expected to make $18 billion—which is what most new prescription drugs make in their lifetime—if you want to sell something for eighteen billion dollars, you don’t want to think about just one or two potential names. You want to start with a pool of names that’s more than enough for you to use, so that if anything goes wrong with one name, you still have many more options—more than you need.
Pfizer said in an online article that it starts with 200 potential names, and narrows it down to 100 names before doing serious analysis. Still, they have 100 options! That’s plenty of names, plenty of options. That’s more than they need—but they want to have the options.
A lot of people are hesitant to switch jobs. I know I was: I was at my previous company for 12 years. And a lot of employees are worried that they won’t be able to get perks and benefits at a different company. So imagine your company gives you four weeks of paid vacation. You like having that time off, and you don’t want to lose it by going to a different company, so you don’t look for a new job.
But wait: Plenty of companies offer four weeks of vacation. And even if they don’t advertise it, you can still ask for it. “Plenty of companies” offer generous vacation: that means there are more than enough options for you.
When I wrote these words, it was 11:11 a.m. I promised I’d get this lesson finished by noon, so the rest of the Plain English team could get to work producing the full and complete lesson, which would eventually be available at PlainEnglish.com/557. I had 54 minutes to finish writing. Was that enough time? Of course. That was plenty of time. We’re almost at the song of the week, and after that it’s just a few more words and I’m done. That was plenty of time. It was enough time.
Just a quick note. You might remember that last week we talked about having something to spare , and I said that means you had more of it than you needed. So how is that different than “plenty of”?
With “plenty of,” you’re describing something that exists, but with “to spare” you’re describing something that you have. Sometimes those are the same. I have plenty of time; I have time to spare. Those mean the same thing.
But, “There are plenty of companies that make acetaminophen” that describes something that exists—there exist many companies that make this product. Whereas, “Here, take some of my Tylenol, I have some to spare” that means, “I’m offering you two pills because I have more than I need right now.”
JR’s song of the week
Today’s song of the week is “I Caught Myself” by Paramore. This was included in the soundtrack of the 2008 movie “Twilight.”
“Catch yourself” is a funny phrase. If I catch you doing something, I discover you doing it—usually something you shouldn’t be doing. I might catch you taking a nap at your desk. You turned your chair toward the corner to make it look like you were reading a file, but I saw your eyes were closed. I caught you.
When you catch yourself, you become aware that you’re doing something without consciously thinking about it. You might resolve to not check your phone while you’re doing something important, but you might catch yourself refreshing your e-mail. What happened? You picked up the phone without thinking, and you caught yourself.
Anyway, that’s the title of the song: “I Caught Myself” by Paramore.
See you next time!
That’s all for today, Thursday, March 23, 2023. I hope you enjoyed today’s lesson. Every once in a while, I want to create a lesson that just reflects whatever I happened to be thinking about at the time. So this was one of those. I spent a good half hour reading about how drugs were named. I was fascinated. I’m glad I learned all this, and I’m happy to share it with you.
We’ll be back on Monday with a brand-new lesson. See you then.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
