With all the discussion of the Presidential debates, Iām astounded at how many people who speak for a profession continually use the word podium, when they actually mean lectern. You stand on a podium. You stand behind a lectern.
Pfffff. When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.
Ambivalent. It doesnāt mean you donāt care ā it means you do care, but are torn between the alternatives.
Iād add āunprepossessingā.
It sounds like it means humble and unassuming, but it actually means ugly. I almost used it to describe a person I was nominating for an award - glad I looked it up before hitting send. :-0
Itās Steven with a āVā
Well, irregardless of when all is said and done, I think you should all pissed off and fuck yourselves too, literally. Buncha oxymorons, enough to give me another me grain, correcting me all the thyme when Iām just making commonsense.
The difference between misuse of ābegs the questionā and ānonplussedā or ābemusedā is that the latter misuses carry useful nuance. Thereās no good substitute that conveys āboredly unimpressedā or āquietly, patronizingly entertained, as by a small childās antics.ā The evolution of those words enriches the common tongue, whereas ābegs the questionā simply reduces the meanings available to it. Weāve already got āraises the question,ā āasks the question,ā ābrings up the issue,ā and a host of other perfectly serviceable exact synonyms; we donāt have any other phrases for āassuming the unspoken truth of a premise.ā So when someone misuses ābegging the question,ā theyāre outright stealing from our common vocabulary. The fact that itās done out of lazy slackjawed ignorance (if not obnoxious contrarian fartlery) is all the more reason not to surrender. Pick away at prescriptivism all you want, get ālolā and assorted emoji into the OED if thatās the kind of shattered civilization you want to leave future generations, but this is where I draw the line.
Pinker appears to be turning into Kingsley Amis.
Perhaps next he will take āThey have a word for itā / āThe Meaning of Tingoā / all those other book-shaped lists of āuseful or mode-up words like Schadenfreudeā, and sign his name to that as well.
Something Iāve found increasingly grating here in New Zealand is people using āpremiseā when they are taking about premises.
Yeah - sad about Pinker.
Re the street signā¦
I dunno, this way at least heās not smearing his stupid all over linguistics.
Oh, this again.
I thoroughly recommend people go and read The Unfolding of Language, a (mostly) very well written book about how language has evolved.
What surprised me most was how often words and phrases have completely switched their meaning.
Yeah. Thinking just about how the word ambivalent is constructed the definition makes sense.
Ambi-means something like both sides same root for amphibian
Valent means proximal. Like valence.
Just my mnemonic. I recognize I almost certainly have the etymology wrong, since I didnāt look it up.
Or maybe itās better broken down as am-bivalence since bivalence would mean proximal to two areas
But then you have to explain the āamā?
I am bivalent to the choice
āOTOHā, he said, ambidextrously ā¦
It should be clear from my posting here that Iām no wordsmith. I just have tons and tons of mnemonics for the words I know. Even if the mnemonic is wrong, if I construct it knowing the definition already, then it still works.
Like that kid in the Wayside School books who did math completely wrong, but always ended up at the correct answer anyway.
