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Post by Verbivore on Oct 2, 2018 0:58:50 GMT
Moments ago at work I came across a "fonetick" spelling in a headline – well, fonetik in that the writer (mis)pronounces the word that way: vunerable.
I'm sure I know more people who say vun(e)rable than those who say vul-ner-able. How frequently do others find this phenomenon?
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 2, 2018 5:54:12 GMT
“Vunrable” is a particular nark of mine, Vv. Mind you, even if we pronounce it my preferred way, as “vul-ner-able”, I’m always left thinking that there are many vulnerable people, though we never hear of anyone being actually vulnered.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 3, 2018 8:31:09 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 4, 2018 10:19:21 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 4, 2018 10:53:22 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 4, 2018 11:03:45 GMT
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Post by Twoddle on Oct 5, 2018 11:25:18 GMT
Verbivore's link, in the Nominative Determinism thread, to a clip from QI reminded me that in the most recent episode of that programme mention was made of the silent P in English. In particular, it was said that the tendency of experts in our language to attach silent Ps to the beginnings of borrowed Greek words is something of an affectation, because the silent P is unknown in Greek.
More bizarrely, a clever English chappy, whose name escapes me, decided that the Scottish Gaelic word, "tàrmachan", which means literally "croaker" (referring to the sound it makes), must be from a Greek origin and should thus have a silent P; hence the bird is known in English as a "ptarmigan".
I'm reminded of a TV sketch by, I think, the geniuses that were Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, in which Cook, playing the part of an upper-crust gentleman, is asked to spell his surname. He does so, and adds, "The p is silent, as in 'swimming pool'".
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 5, 2018 12:16:26 GMT
I think I have noticed that the word “killed” is being used more and more frequently where “died” would have been more likely to be employed in the past.
I recently saw a report of someone being killed as a result of a bite by a venomous snake and another where people had been killed in a boating accident. I think, in the past, the individual would have died as a result of the snake bite and that the victims of the boating tragedy would have drowned. I think “killed” implies an immediate death which was not the case in either the snake bite or the boating accident.
An examination of the usage of “died” and “killed” in all English books does not entirely confirm my thought (see Google Books Ngram Viewer) but “killed” has been used with little change in frequency for around two centuries and there has been a steady decline in “died” over the same period (although both have seen a slight increase in recent years). These statistics refer to books but I am convinced my observation is correct insofar as it applies to news reports.
Do readers of this forum have any thoughts on the matter?
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 8, 2018 3:38:29 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 8, 2018 6:01:43 GMT
Killed vs died.
I suppose the difference can be important in newsworthiness. We’re all going to die but only some of us will be killed.
Sometimes only killed gives the right sense: he died after a snake bite. OK ... but was it the bite that killed him?
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 8, 2018 6:07:34 GMT
Do we need those propsed words?
Clearly not. Each was neatly explained in the film by short phrases or even single words that already exist in English!
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 8, 2018 6:45:11 GMT
Do we need those proposed words? Clearly not. Each was neatly explained in the film by short phrases or even single words that already exist in English! Much what I thought, too. However, there are many "lost" words in English, and Mark Forsyth (he of The Inky Fool – inkyfool.com, whose blog I have followed for some time) writes about them in his book The Horologicon. I received it in today’s post with two other Forsyths: The Etymologicon and The Elements of Eloquence. I have already ascertained, less than an hour after taking delivery, that I shall enjoy these works, and thought folk here might enjoy this excerpt from the ‘Preambulation’. [writing about readers’ possible occupations] “For all I know, you could spend all day inserting live eels into a horse’s bottom. If you do, I must apologise for the arrangement of this book, and the only consolation I can offer is that there is a single eighteenth-century English word for shoving live eels up a horse’s arse. Here is the definition given in Captain Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: “ ‘FEAGUE: To feague a horse; to put ginger up a horse’s fundament, and formerly, it is said, a live eel, to make him lively and carry his tail well; it is said, a forfeit is incurred by any horse-dealer’s servant, who shall show a horse without first feaguing him. Feague is used, figuratively, for encouraging or spiriting one up.’“There are three instructive points to be taken from that definition. First, you should never trust an eighteenth-century horse dealer. Especially if you’re a horse. Or an eel. “Second, the English language is ready for anything. If you were to surprise a Frenchman in the act of putting a conger up a mare’s bottom he would probably have to splutter his way through several sentences of circumlocutory verbocination. However, ask an English-speaker why they are sodomising a horse with a creature from the deep and they can simply raise a casual eyebrow and ask: ‘Can’t you see I’m feaguing?’ “The ability to explain why you’re putting an eel up a horse with such holophrastic precision is the birthright of every English-speaking man and woman, and we must reclaim it.”
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 8, 2018 12:40:19 GMT
I read all three of those books last year, Vv. Each is an interesting reference work, but also unusually lively to read.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 8, 2018 17:35:34 GMT
I see no added value in some foreign language words but there is a German word that, as age creeps on, I increasingly need and for which there seems to be no English equivalent:— torschlusspanik = the sadness one feels on realising that one has left it too late. Literally “gate closing panic”. I will never climb Africa’s Killimanjaro or even Great Gable in the English Lake District. I will never get to see gorillas in the wild. I can’t eat that lovely cream cake that I had forgotten and which is well past its sell-by date. Even, I will never learn another language as my memory is now too fickle.
Ah, me ☹️
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 8, 2018 17:44:56 GMT
And another German word I admire:— verschlimmbesserung = something made worse while trying hard to improve it.
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