Now, I have been on New York City buses often enough to grant that there are times that I end up not only standing but standing specifically where the bus driver stands me {“you there, there’s room behind you to your left, c’mon move to the back of the bus”}, so I am provisionally and grudgingly willing to tolerate “standee”.
But “attendee”, for the luvva Mike? No way. If you went to it, whether it be concert, fundraiser, or world cup finals match, you’re an attender. Or, if you prefer, guest, customer, member of audience, spectator, fan, or afficionado. But not attendee. If you wish to be an attendee, you’ve got to get them to come to you and attend you as an event.
It is not, of course, in any way true that the crux of the syntactical problem is people desiring to be attendees, or to be designated as such. It doesn’t. Attention-whores though some of us may be, most folks file into their seats or boxes and attend the main event with the full expectation of being entertained as audience. No, it’s the scribes, jotting down their notes and expanding them to column-length with an annoyingly ovine tendency to misuse the same terms and phrases misused by their colleagues in the columns of previous weeks.
OK, I’m done here. Thank you for attending. Hey, whaddaya know, I’m an attendee!
It was already used to denote both indirect objects and direct objects (“payee” versus “honoree”, for instance.) And from a syntactic standpoint, the subject of an intransitive verb isn’t necessarily much different than the object of a transitive verb. (In fact, many theories of syntax posit that the subjects of some intransitive verbs actually are objects that get raised by various rules to the surface subject position.) There’s nothing strange or counterlogical about this usage, particularly so because it doesn’t create any ambiguity. And a word like “attendee” is so well-established that complaining about it makes about as much sense as complaining about the word “clock”.
I see no reason to name a time-keeping device after an ancient German bell. We should immediately replace the word “clock” with “chronometer” (or, perhaps, “time piece”) throughout all publications and public discourse. (And since I am sure that most people choose to look at the time piece on their arm only when necessary, and not spend every waking moment “watching” it, we should also demand that such devices be renamed “time referent” or something equally precise.)
Sometimes the difference is clear. In a case of voyeurism, you can figure out who is the peeper and who is the peepee. Here on the SDMB, you are probably a Doper and not [www.goldborder.com/tidbit-dwarfs.htm]( this guy)
