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Post by Verbivore on May 7, 2021 4:14:17 GMT
This (@ para. #15) almost drives me toward abolition of our troublesome apostrophic friend. <quote>While the Gates' managed to amicably split their fortune …</quote> (along with an infinitive!)
[sigh] Would we have anything left to live for if we were deprived of the apostrophe? Quelle horreur!
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Post by Dave Miller on May 7, 2021 4:48:49 GMT
Mmm. Does it stand for the missing “~es”?
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Post by Verbivore on May 7, 2021 6:32:32 GMT
Mmm. Does it stand for the missing “~es”? Perhaps even for a missing 'es' – Gates'es'.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on May 7, 2021 10:56:36 GMT
I have just read a promotional item for a television programme that follows predatory animals “from the moment they detect their prey through to the vital kill”. Indeed, quite so, but the juxtaposition of “vital” and “kill” struck me as being strange. Is it an oxymoron, a paradox, an antithesis, or just a straightforward combination of adjective and noun?
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Post by Verbivore on May 7, 2021 11:11:05 GMT
I have just read a promotional item for a television programme that follows predatory animals “from the moment they detect their prey through to the vital kill”. Indeed, quite so, but the juxtaposition of “vital” and “kill” struck me as being strange. Is it an oxymoron, a paradox, an antithesis, or just a straightforward combination of adjective and noun? LJH: Methinks it be mere flummery, promotional bumf. I spent years stripping the self-inflating bullshit from entertainment blurbs; I could remove a third of the verbiage and still have the material make sense. Sometimes more. Whatever it is, you're right about that queer juxtaposition.
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Post by Verbivore on May 8, 2021 8:19:24 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on May 9, 2021 2:21:57 GMT
Today is the bicentenary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte. […] So was he a megalomanic warmonger or a major benefactor of modern civilisation? Here's an interesting piece on Napoleon, Hegel, and Xi Jinping: Napoleon "could be the soul of the world and the demon of Europe". – French president Emmanuel Macron
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Post by Little Jack Horner on May 9, 2021 23:58:45 GMT
I have just encountered for the first time the word “exoneree” meaning a person who has been exonerated of a crime for which they had previously been convicted. On checking on-line, I find that is only new to me as there are several references to it including in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. However, I am glad that the spell checker here doesn’t recognise it because I think it is, without doubt, the ugliest word that has been my misfortune to discover.
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Post by Dave Miller on May 10, 2021 7:10:19 GMT
That’s interesting, LJH. There’s no obvious reason why exoneree should be any more ugly than, say, absentee or escapee - and indeed the latter do annoy me, while exoneree doesn’t.
I think there’s a pattern, inbuilt in us: that formations we don’t ourselves use seem “wrong” or ugly. That’s why I bridle at more important of a reason or when the “of” is missed from throw it out the window. I’m perfectly happy, though, with jump off the pier, where an additional “of” turns it ugly.
There’s no semantic justification for my preferences there; it’s just that I’m more familiar with British English than with American. What you encounter most often is what seems “right”.
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Post by Verbivore on May 10, 2021 8:14:49 GMT
It must be Typewriter Month! Without our having broached the topic of typewriters, this morning my landlady offered me a long-disused but sound mid-60s Smith-Corona Galaxie II. I accepted knowing I could palm it off on a collector / trader friend – preferable to seeing it in the garbage. All but three keys work (and I can see why), the action feels solid and precise. Perhaps there's little wrong with it that compressed air and some light machine oil can't fix. Suppose I could use it for addressing envelopes. (I must need to do that at least twice per year!)
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Post by Little Jack Horner on May 11, 2021 10:23:24 GMT
In my starting post this month I raised the question I have asked before concerning the assertion sometimes made on this forum that the “rule” about avoiding split infinitives derives from Latin grammar. I said that I had not seen any definitive evidence for this assertion. No-one has yet provided any such evidence so henceforward I will regard it as a myth. Whether the rule is valid is not germane; I am only questioning its origin.
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Post by Verbivore on May 13, 2021 2:39:23 GMT
I’m sure that mis-divisions of words have been mentioned on here long past, but I don’t recall there being ('n)other than (n)apron and (n)orange.
In the course of today’s reading I came across another – (n)auger – which further led me to (n)umpire and (n)adder.
Are there others?
Naprons, nadders, naugers, noranges, and numpires
apron – Middle English naperon, from Old French, diminutive of nape, nappe ‘tablecloth’, from Latin mappa ‘napkin’. The n was lost by wrong division of a napron.
adder – Old English nædre ‘serpent, adder’, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch adder and German Natter. The initial n was lost in Middle English by wrong division of a naddre.
auger – Old English nafogār, from nafu + gār ‘piercer’. The n was lost by wrong division of a nauger.
orange – late Middle English: from Old French orenge (in the phrase pomme d'orenge), based on Arabic nāranj, from Persian nārang, from which the n has been lost in English.
umpire – late Middle English (originally as noumpere) (denoting an arbitrator): from Old French nonper ‘not equal’. The n was lost by wrong division of a noumpere.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on May 13, 2021 10:28:15 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on May 13, 2021 11:12:06 GMT
I can’t recall who mentioned their dislike of the modern use of well to begin a sentence but one contributor was complaining about it in the depths of an Irish website eight years ago: www.dailyedge.ie/meaningless-phrases-1177755-Dec2013/
It’s not worth looking for the quotation. I just mention it.
On the other hand, contributors to our own forum might feel at home with many of the other linguistic peeves mentioned in the comments section of the article. I hadn’t realised that I had so many little peeves that I shared with other people. I suppose I “should get a life”!
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Post by Verbivore on May 13, 2021 11:31:07 GMT
Woot! It's certainly a dense document, LJH, but yes, I think it's relevant. After two pages I bookmarked it for later. This evening's now a tad too far gone for such brain strain.
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