There is no ‘n’ in ‘restaurateur’!
Even the NPR announcers are doing this. Damn!
Soon they’ll be saying ‘real-a-tor’.
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
There is no ‘n’ in ‘restaurateur’!
Even the NPR announcers are doing this. Damn!
Soon they’ll be saying ‘real-a-tor’.
[/QUOTE]
I would just like to apologise for this one – anything having to do with the spelling of the word restaurant is beyond me. Thank Og for the spell check included in Firefox! Seriously. it is one of those words that I always misspell, no matter how many times I have had to correct it within the same document!
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
There is no ‘n’ in ‘restaurateur’!
[/QUOTE]
Wow. Never knew that. Thought you were crazy. Looked it up.
Am suitably humbled.
Marshall instead of martial. It’s court martial and martial law.
Put me down as another one who didn’t know this.
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
There is no ‘n’ in ‘restaurateur’!
Even the NPR announcers are doing this. Damn!
[/QUOTE]
How cool–I had no idea but it makes sense:
[French, from restaurer, to restore; see restaurant.]
restorer, restoring…got it!
>Files this with “champing at the bit”<
Additional peeves:
I need you to sign-off on the document.
Please log-off at the end of the day.
GRR!!! Those are the noun forms–no hyphen in the verbs!
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
Because within is not inclusive. Saying they are within six points of tying the score means they are less than, not less than or equal to, six points behind.
[/QUOTE]
Does everybody agree with **RNATB ** here? Because either he or I is RNATB. Who, for example, dictated that “within is not inclusive”? Seems inclusive to me.
[QUOTE=Max Torque]
I know I post about this one every time one of these threads pops up, but what drives me crazy is “different than.”
There’s no such thing as “different than”. “Different” is not a comparative word, strange though it may seem. Comparatives are words like “hotter”, “faster”, or “uglier”, and you can combine those words with “than” to indicate that one object has more hotness, more fastness, or more ugliness than another.
But “different than” is meaningless. One object can’t contain more “differentness” than another. Every time I hear it, I grit my teeth and think, “‘Different FROM’, you dumbass.”
[/QUOTE]
What makes you think “than” requires a comparative?
Anyway, I urge you to think again regarding the standardness of “different than”.
[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
Does everybody agree with **RNATB ** here? Because either he or I is RNATB. Who, for example, dictated that “within is not inclusive”? Seems inclusive to me.
[/QUOTE]
I think it is whatever people use it as. Which means, it is often inclusive, and sometimes not.
[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
Does everybody agree with **RNATB ** here? Because either he or I is RNATB. Who, for example, dictated that “within is not inclusive”? Seems inclusive to me.
[/QUOTE]
Merriam-Webster:
- used as a function word to indicate a specified difference or margin <came within two points of a perfect mark> <within a mile of the town>
Case Closed.
[QUOTE=Indistinguishable]
What makes you think “than” requires a comparative?
Anyway, I urge you to think again regarding the standardness of “different than”.
[/QUOTE]
Ugh, that linked page confirms my fear that if a word or phrase is used incorrectly for enough time, by enough people, someone will eventually call it “correct.” Sorry, but even in their own example, the phrase still sounds wretched and meaningless.
Their example is, “The campus is different than it was twenty years ago.” Suppose we put another word in there, such as “ugly.” “The campus is uglier than it was twenty years ago.” Okay, that’s perfectly decipherable: in twenty years, the campus has increased in ugliness. Makes sense. Now, apply the same deciphering to the original sentence: in twenty years, the campus has increased in differentness. Wait, what? That makes no sense whatsoever. Their second version of the sentence, using “different from”, actually makes sense.
“Than” is a comparative conjunction that introduces the second element of an unequal comparison, as in, “You are prettier than she is.” As I stated earlier, one object cannot contain more “differentness” than another. Yes, there are oddball cases where the two words can appear together if the surrounding clauses are arranged just right, but I was under the impression that this thread was about “common usage”, and in common usage, all too many people say “different than” when they should say “different from.”
I still don’t understand why you think “than” only can be used in the comparative fashion.
“My beliefs are different from yours.” Suppose we put another word in there, such as “similar”. *“My beliefs are similar from yours”. What, what? That makes no sense whatsoever. The thing to say is “My beliefs are similar to yours.” Ergo, ipso facto, etc., it should be “My beliefs are different to yours”.
Only that line of reasoning is fatally flawed. There’s no reason to believe that this kind of word substitution proves anything; the prepositions used with one word, and the way those prepositions are used with that word, don’t establish or require anything about prepositions used with another word/phrase. The ways prepositions are deployed in English in phrases such as these are pretty arbitrary.
Also, let’s point out that “different than” is analogous to “other than”; you can’t be more or less “other than” something, I imagine you would agree, yet all the same, that is the phrase, not *“other from”.
[QUOTE=Max Torque]
Ugh, that linked page confirms my fear that if a word or phrase is used incorrectly for enough time, by enough people, someone will eventually call it “correct.”
[/QUOTE]
As far as innovation goes, did you know that the original form was actually “different (un)to”, with “different from” only arising later? Though this all went down several hundreds of years ago, longer than any linguistic grudges can reasonably be held. See the commentary in the (generally excellent) Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage. The facts of the situation are, as they say, “there need have been no problem here at all, since all three expressions have been in standard use since the 16th and 17th centuries and all three continue to be in standard use.”
To you, maybe. Sounds fine to me, and plenty of others (certainly to the people who say it). The quote which ends the MWDEU article above is both beautiful and relevant:
[QUOTE=H.L. Mencken]
The excellent tribe of grammarians, the precisians and all others who strive to be correct and correctors, have as much power to prohibit a single word or phrase as a gray squirrel has to put out Orion with a flicker of its tail.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve got to share this egregious (did I get that right?) example that arrived in my phone bill from “AT&T Intellectual Property” today. It’s in 20-point bold type on the front of a pamphlet about their "StarLines"® Paralympics program support:
“AT&T supports that spirit through it’s sponsorship of the U.S. Paralympic Team.”
[QUOTE=Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]
Merriam-Webster:
- used as a function word to indicate a specified difference or margin <came within two points of a perfect mark> <within a mile of the town>
Case Closed.
[/QUOTE]
What case?
M-W entirely fails to address whether or not the term is inclusive.
I work at Wally World. Several time a night I hear, “If you have ten items or less,…” no, dear cowrker, it’s “ten items or fewer, unless you’re measuring.” Fellow language mavens, am I wrong? Isn’t “less” used for measuring, and “fewer” used for counting?
Love, Phil
That’s a common urban legend, so to speak. It isn’t true.
Also, I have a problem with the superfluous apostrophe often added to plurals. According to my 1986 HOW Handbook for Office Workers, an apostrophe is used in a plural only when using a number (the roaring 20’s) or an acronym (how many HOW’s do you need?). I have been known to correct fellow sales associates; at stores using chalk boards to advertise specials, I’ve changed the boards myself. (Note to the Meijers produce person: avocado does not have either an “l” or a second “a”) I know it’s silly, but my obnoxious self joked that the avocados came from New Jersey, home of Thomas “Alva” Edison.
Love, Phil
“avocado” most certainly does have a second “a”. What it lacks is a third one. 
[QUOTE=Indistinguishable]
That’s a common urban legend, so to speak. It isn’t true.
[/QUOTE]
See my post (#132)
Meh. Doesn’t prove anything; neither the Tesco executives nor the complainers are linguists. If enough deluded people complained for long enough to Tesco about signs containing too many letter "j"s, they’d eventually change that too.