I know I’ve been a bit heavy on T-shirt postings these days, but this latest T-shirt deserves attention. As soon as I fully understood what it meant, I felt the urge to buy it, just for its grammatical correctness!
At first, I thought it said, “We’re #1.” That would make it a nice antiquated T-shirt, reminiscent of the past. But then I realized that I had read the words too quickly, and hadn’t noticed that there was no apostrophe.
The shirt is meant to read, “Were #1,” as in “Used to be #1.”
For that reason, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS T-SHIRT.
Some of you know that I am a huge geography nerd in addition to being a grammar nerd. In fact, I’m much more of a geography-phile than a grammar-phile.
Because of my geographic knowledge, I am particularly THRILLED that this shirt includes Northern Ireland in order to form the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom consists of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; Britain consists of everything but Northern Ireland.
For those reasons, this shirt is PERFECT.
Buy it here. It’s on sale for $14.99 this week.
I already own three shirts from bustedtees.com: Without Me, It’s Just Aweso; Irish I Were Drunk (I wear it exclusively on St. Paddy’s Day and on days when I go to Celtics games) and SILF.
I swear, Busted Tees isn’t paying me to advertise their wares. The fact that the “Were #1″ shirt took me a second to actually get it made it well worth posting!
8 responses so far ↓
Rizzo // April 15, 2008 at 7:20 am
haaaaa I never picked up on that. I will soon be able to offer you the finest tees in the universe. Rizzo Tees will soon be taking over, lol
SILF is the best shirt that Busted has……. … too damn funny
Rob // April 15, 2008 at 3:34 pm
As a baseball fan, I love the 756* shirt, and as a Canadian I get a kick out of Canada: America’s Hat. I do like like the Without Me It’s Just Aweso shirt, but the apostrophe is missing. Also, what’s up with the site’s “Similiar shirts” feature on each shirt’s page?
Rob // April 15, 2008 at 3:38 pm
ps. I’ve been reading your blog for a couple of weeks now and I enjoy it immensely!
Kate // April 15, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Glad you like the blog, Rob!
My company has a Canadian office, and one of my friends wore the “Canada: America’s Hat” shirt the day several of our Canadian colleagues visited. He planned ahead and bought it way in advance.
Alexa Moutevelis // April 16, 2008 at 11:30 am
Please explain why it isn’t “Was #1,” as in “The United Kingdom was #1″ or “Great Britain was #1.”
Matt // April 16, 2008 at 9:16 pm
I was thinking the same thing as Alexa. It can’t even be “The British Isles were #1″ since the shirt doesn’t include the whole of Ireland. Am I missing something?
Kate // April 16, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Good point. The way I looked at it, to me it seemd like, “[They] were #1.” But it works because “we’re” and “were” look so similar.
furpurrson // April 17, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Remember that in British English, singular nouns that represent more than one thing (”committee,” “team,” “herd,” etc.) are assigned plural verb forms. On the t-shirt, think of (understood) “England” as a plural, particularly if the reference might be to a sports team. When Commonwealth sportswriters discuss English national teams they would say, “England were soundly routed by Australia.” So “Were No. 1″ makes perfect sense - to a Brit.
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