Lord Beer Me the Strength

Topics: That one joke from The Office, the Bible

“Beer me” is an attested phrase in English which turns the noun beer into a transitive verb. I am unbeered; beer me. This construction exudes a confident, carefree energy that every man imagines he possesses. It’s fun to say and fun to oblige.

I think "beering" could beer a lot more weight than this.

Beer with me.

All languages engage in a linguistic phenomenon called “hedging,” which turns potentially confrontational utterances into indirect statements. English has a particular fondness for hedging, offering many nuanced options for any kind of request.

I crave a construction with more backbone than Option 5, but considerably less backbone than Option 1, and Jim Halpert came through for me. "Beer me" is simultaneously more direct and more casual than anything on the list. The verb "beer" conceals utility beneath its whimsy. In the context of the episode, Andy leaves it up to the listener to divine what the "beer" is (a bottle of water, for example). My unlikely dream is to take "beer me," a transitive verb, and make it ditransitive. Observe:

Transitive: Beer me. (Direct object)

Ditransitive: Beer me that pen. (Direct object and indirect object)

First of all, this is no mere replacement for the word "give." As a transitive verb, beer connotes playful urgency and implies that the beer is to be tossed. That connotation would follow it into the ditransitive form. "Beer me that pen!" makes it sound like the speaker is about to write down a fire sonnet and can't risk losing inspiration by grabbing their own pen. But without the exclamation point, "Beer me that pen" does a lot of work.

Now we've come all the way back to the title: “Lord beer me the strength.” This is obviously a joke written for a TV show and not likely to be attested even in my linguistic utopia. It's a shame, because this is a great new cocktail of meaning for a well-worn phrase. You go to church on Sunday, I'm at Jesus's backyard barbecue. Yo, Big Man! Is there any stouthearted resolve in the face of senseless cruelty in the cooler? Hell yeah, brother—I mean Father! Beer me!

While we’re on the topic, it’s worth noting that the original “Lord grant me the strength” isn’t in the imperative mood at all, because Christians tend to be leery of telling God what to do. This is actually an example of the optative mood, which has more of a “knock on wood” connotation. We might interpret it as “May the Lord grant me the strength.” or “If the Lord sees fit, perhaps He will grant me the strength.” This grammatical mood only exists in English via organized religion and hasn’t really branched out from there. Why is that?

I have little more than a theory: When Christianity’s foundational texts arrived and spread in Europe, they did so in Ancient Greek, which has a robust optative mood. In fact, Ancient Greek is one of the most fusional languages ever concocted. Here’s all the different ways a single verb can be marked. Lord beer me the strength. I was fascinated to learn that sentences in Ancient Greek have to begin with a conjunction, which is probably why every Bible verse starts with "And," or "For," or "Thus."

When Anglophones started translating the bible, they faced the dilemma that haunts all translators: accuracy or artistry? If the source language has a morphological optative and English doesn't, you can "localize" the sentence to sound more natural. But the more you change it, the less of the original connotation remains. I suspect when it came to the word of God the translators prioritized accuracy, hence the resulting wall of run-on sentences that are technically legal but don't represent anything a real English-speaker has ever said.