Chiming In on ‘Chiming With’

By Anne Curzan. See if anything strikes your ear as odd in the following sentence: “A fact like this [that Obama plays golf more with an aide than with John Boehner] can seem to chime with the sort of complaints you hear all the time about Obama. …”
This sentence appeared on Page 49 of the January 27 issue of The New Yorker, in David Remnick’s profile of President Obama, “Going the Distance.” It was pointed out to me by the careful language observer Dave Carlyon, who wrote to me about it because the “chiming” sounded off to him. More...