Ramblings about words, art, books, the media and Golden Age detective stories. Buy me a kofi at: https://ko-fi.com/lucyrfisher
Monday 27 December 2010
Grammar: More Misplaced Pedantry
If you want to be angry about neologisms, coinages, buzz words and new usages, you’ll always have an excuse, because they’re not going anywhere. But perhaps you want to be angry. People who are furious about language change only know about five examples, and go on about them the whole time. For a "thin end of wedge" theory to stand up, you need thousands of examples. More here.
an item on the agenda is an "agendum”
anticipate means “act as if something foreseen has already happened” not “look forward to”
ate should be pronounced “et”. Or maybe “eight”.
data and media are plurals
don’t say like or the likes of when you mean such as
furze/gorse is the only true synonym
It’s Hallowe’en, not Halloween (and anyway it's a ghastly American import)
It’s PEJorative and PRImarily and MILItarily
It's "I should like", not "I would like". "I would like" means "I should like to like". (@frankish)
It's the Union flag, not the Union Jack.
less stuff, fewer things
mind your ps and qs – it’s really please and thankyous
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out – it refers to the plant, not the month.
nice means precise
rule the roost – it's really "roast" (cue long explanation about medieval banquets, yawn)
Scotch and Scottish are wrong – it’s Scots (or the other way round).
The nuns at school were very against “I don’t take dancing” and “I don’t have a pen” –
Americanisms!
via means by way of, not by means of
Who led the pedants’ rebellion? Which Tyler
You can only use "between" if you're talking about two people or things, because tween means two. (For more than two, you use "among".)
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