I feel 100% exactly the opposite. If you say it’s literally raining cats and dogs, I’m not bugged by “literally” at all, because of course that’s an impossibility. But if you say it rained literally every day when you were on vacation, I’ll take you at your word, and think you’re an exaggerator if it only rained on some of the days.
As far as “whip cream,” makes me nuts for sure, but I do always think of the rather direct analogy to “iced cream.” If I insist it has to be “whipped cream,” am I now just like Mr. Burns saying “iced cream” a century too late?
Totally not ready to deal with “can vegetables” yet, however.
I think one reason “can vegetables” is more irritating than “ice cream,” aside from the fact that one has been standard English for a long time now and we aren’t used to hearing the other, is that “iced cream” is a bit hard to enunciate clearly; no wonder the D dropped off. But “cand vegetables” is easy to say. I guess “whipped cream” is somewhere in the middle.
In English, saying “I do not know,” “I don’t know,” “I dunno,” and “i’uh’oh” are possible, and carry shades of register and connotation that French cannot convey easily.
Are you sure? I don’t speak French, but I can think of four different ways to say “I don’t know” in Hebrew, too, each with its own connotations. I can’t imagine how French would be any different.
All best consumed with a nice, cold glass of iced tea! I’m actually surprised that I have not begun to see “ice tea” in print, since I don’t know anyone who actually pronounces that “d”.
Something I’m seeing a lot now, that may or may not be considered correct, is the past participle of the word “pet”, as in giving a dog scritchies. “I pet my dog whenever I come home”. “Yesterday, I pet the dog when I left the house”. It’s PETTED, dammit.
But Wiktionary actually lists “pet” as a possibility, though notes that it is nonstandard.
You remind me. On one of those cooking competition shows I saw an outrageously flamboyant gay gentleman who performed his Deep South accent by exaggerating it to parodic levels. Those shows like to put colorful “characters” on. But this guy took it too far when he said “whup cream.” The other cooks called him out on that. “There is no way that ‘whup cream’ is part of your native dialect!”
I find it humorous that in your post complaining about people skipping necessary syllables and conjugation, you leave out these grammatically necessary words:
… “whip cream,” it makes me nuts …
and
I’m Totally not ready to deal …
I completely agree with your point. If not quite how you said it.
The fact you inadvertently scored points for the opposing team (Team Close Enough Good Enough) at the same time is delicious.
Bravo Good Sir!
A microcosm of English evolving before our very eyes.
I haven’t read through this entire thread so I’m not sure if this has been brought up.
We say - The library is closed. When it isn’t closed, should we say - The library is opened or The library is open. I only see “Closed” and “Open” signs. I’ve never seen an “Opened” sign.
There’s a significant difference between the two product names. Whipped cream is literally cream that’s been thickened by whipping with a beater or blender. “Whip” can be a noun or a verb, but not an adjective. “Whipped” is both the past tense of a verb and also an adjective. “Whipped cream” describes the product; “whip cream” is grammatical nonsense and most likely arises, like a lot of linguistic nonsense, from mishearing and lazy thinking.
In “ice cream”, the word “ice” is an adjective, and that adjective has a wide range of meaning, as in “ice hockey”, “ice follies”, “ice sculpture”, “ice cubes”, etc. It simply denotes the fact that the described object has something to do with ice. And in the early days of making ice cream, before refrigeration, crushed ice and salt was used to freeze sweetened cream to make the stuff, so the name is both grammatically correct and a good reflection of the process for making it.
I think part of the problem here is that “the library is close” obviously doesn’t work. But it’s more than that. “Closed” in the above sentence is an adjective, describing the state of the library. “Close” is a verb and would not be grammatical here (it’s also an adjective but with a completely different meaning). “Open”, however, is an adjective just like “closed”. The word forms of “open” and “closed” look different but both are adjectives performing exactly the same function.
