Funny thing us, up to now, one of the few times I’ve seen “disinterested” in print:
implied the word meant a state not quite indifferent but leaning closer to borderline hostility, i.e. stop trying to interest me in this incredibly boring idea of yours or I will seriously consider punching you in the throat.
And since this is how I start feeling when people go on at length at hairsplitting grammatical debate, I consider myself throughly disinterested.
They use the longer word because they want to sound more important or sophisticated. Law enforcement often do this too at press conferences. They won’t use phrasal verbs, instead choosing akward, latinate verbs. They substitute common nouns for less common nouns.
EX: “The vehicle proceded in a contrary direction to the location,” etc.
="The car drove off."
They love to talk like that any time they’re in front of a news camera.
If find this much more annoying than people who misuse language out of ignorance. One of the more frequent words people use to sound more sophisticated is oxymoron. It originally was strictly a poetic term, referring to a semantically impossible collocation. Ex: cold heat, etc. Now everbody is using it interchangably for contradiction and paradox, which have different meanings. Now the dictionaries, in order to be correctly descriptive, will have to include these definitions for oxymoron, even though contradiction and paradox are perfectly good words that serve their purposes.
Another annoying thing is no one today in TV and radio interviews can answer a question with a simple yes–it always has to be absolutely. There’s something about a microphone that makes people think they have to talk differently.
Lack of consistency? Are you trying to be an asshole? If I am presented with evidence I didn’t have before and change my view based on that evidence, is that a fault (“I lack consistency”) or is that what we’re striving for on a board dedicated to fighting ignorance? Like I said before, if you fucking paid attention, you’d see everybody else kept bringing up “disinterested” long after I said “screw it, you’re right” as an example of my wrong-headedness. I tried to get somebody to take the bait on my (still valid, I feel) point about “fortuitous”, but all I got was more “disinterested”. So I attempted to argue my basic point, about people using words they didn’t know the meaning of, in the context of each particular post. And I don’t think the evidence is altogether condemning of my view on “disinterested”, just that there are enough contradictory cites for its proper/improper usage from the “authorities” that I’ll go along with the idea that my take isn’t written in stone, and I was mistaken in assuming it was so black-and-white. Sweet crap on toast, I was trying to be civil and humble about it, and you still talk to me like a dick.
Or you could have said you wouldn’t have opted for either of my “stupid choices” and explained what action you would have taken. But I guess my formidable powers of mental enslavement prevented you from daring offer your own alternative, huh?
For the last friggin’ time on this particular one: I was arguing that the only reason it came back around to the original meaning was because of people’s ignorance of its (at the time, primary/currently acceptable) meaning, which pissed me off. Yeah, as I said, willful ignorance/laziness pisses me off. I don’t want to tell anyone how to live/how to speak, but I can still rant about how they do it, right? Is it impossible to be bothered by something without also declaring that it should be banned from the face of the Earth? Man, I thought I’d obviously used humor in this thread in an attempt to show I wasn’t taking it all that seriously, but I guess next time I’ll have to throw in a boatload of dumb-ass smilies so nobody gets the idea I think I’m the arbiter of correct word usage and should have the final say on all matters linguistic. If I’m proven wrong, I’ll take it. But the number of people who are willing to accuse me of elitism for pointing out that sometimes many people will use a word without knowing what it means and that it bugs me is weird to me even after all this. I guess it should stand to reason that if I’m capable of getting upset over trivial shit there will be others who get just as upset over the opposing view of the same trivial shit.
If you’ll notice, I opted to use generalities because that argument applies to nearly any word whose meaning has changed. Frankly, I’m getting sick of disinterested myself.
I actually correct and usually mock my friends when they use a word incorrectly, too. I have a friend whose vocabulary is pretty off-kilter; he knows some big words, but the meanings he’s attached to them can vary wildly from the accepted meaning, to the point where I got highly confused by his writing sometimes.
The key here is that a person using an incorrect word is only one person. Someone who mixes ‘suburban’ with ‘urban’ is mistaken, because nobody else uses those words to mean what they meant.
Language is created from groups. The group of people who speak that language determine the meanings of words, not any one person. A person can coin a phrase, but others have to like that phrase and start using it for it to gain any real meaning. A person can confuse ‘suburban’ with ‘urban’, but only when others begin making the same switch in increasing numbers is it considered acceptable.
Rants about word usage pointing out a person who uses a malapropism or something silly; I’m right there with you. But a rant on word shifts that have already taken such firm root in English that the dictionaries have been changed to acknowledge them is, well, silly. You’re welcome to pointless rants, but you might as well rant about the fact that the word ‘thing’ is no longer used to mean a tribal committee. The word shift is already in motion or has already finished, and the only thing that’ll change it is another gradual shift.
Yes, lack of consistency. You say, petulantly, “stop arguing about ‘disinterested’!” and then you turn around and keep making backhand arguments about it. That’s not my problem.
I could’ve, but why bother? Don’t present me with false choices. If this concerns you that much, consider it a game: what do YOU think I’d advocate doing, instead of either of the dumb choices you offered, in your example?
Daniel
It happens because people hear the phrase “How dare you!” and think that the “you” is somehow the object of the verb to dare, oddly enough, since that verb usually isn’t transitive. “How dare you!” is significantly more commonly heard than “How dare” with other pronouns, and “you” is the same in the objective case as in the nominative. So people think there should be a nominative pronoun after the word “dare”.
Well, you’re part of the problem if you keep bringing it up after I said I’d ceded the point, aren’t you? And then I keep having to go back to it and make “backhanded arguments” to let you know why I’d thought it was a valid point in the first place rather than something I just yanked out of my morning stool to fling around for the hell of it. Funny how that one word seems to be a sticking point, and yet you haven’t said shit about my “fortuitous” example as either supporting or weakening my (amended) argument.
Man, did you double dose on your Smug Dick pills today? OK, Spock, let’s see about my “stupid” and “dumb” choices: the first would certainly qualify if you lacked the ability to take anything other than a literal reading of the text; otherwise, I can’t see how you’d fail to recognize hyperbole and sarcasm (hint: a Koko the Gorilla reference is a good tip-off) as a rhetorical device, but if you want my literal meaning, it was: would you have no problem with the word “disfortunate”? As to the second choice, please enlighten me as to how cluing me in I was using the incorrect term is stupid/dumb/a false choice.
As for “I could’ve, but why bother?”, maybe so you don’t come off like a Smug Dick. I can say any of your points are moronic or half-witted and then offer that I don’t have to back up my assertions because I’m much too intelligent to stoop to dignifying your drivel with a response of substance. You know what that would make me? Hint: rhymes with “smug dick”.
Or maybe so I understand your point of view and we could have a discussion about our differences of opinion. You know, like human beings sometimes do.
What do I think you’d advocate doing? Based on your last few responses, I’d have to say “Say nothing and let the miserable wretch wallow in his illiteracy and then mock him to my friends while putting up a front of comeraderie”. Are there prizes for this game?
Fortunately for you, no prizes. You got the first two words right, but that’s not worth much.
As for the irony of you, who started a thread to criticize people for using a word correctly, calling me a smug dick–thanks! I do enjoy me a good bit of irony.
Daniel
I meant to say disapprobation.
I recently read <i>The Poisonwood Bible</i> and one of the main characters constantly used the wrong words, trying to sound smarter than she was. One quote that stood out as particularly funny:
“Maybe he’s been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.”
Now anyone reading that would know what she was trying to say, but does that mean it was right? No. It really is possible to make ERRORS in language.
Which of course means, alternately,
His Probation
Disapportionate
Disapproval
Disc Apprehension
Distaff Rotation
Dismal Location
Tits Ass Notation
It’a all about the context. And who is saying it to whom. And what they meant. Or what you think they meant. Etymology is nothing. Tradition is reactionary. And possibly racist. Without doubt elitist. * If you think that a word should mean tomorrow what it means today you are simply a knucklehead who just does not get it that languages change over time.
*
(Not picking on you Spectre. Just using your response as a springboard.)
Close, but oh so wrong!
I don’t think a word should do anything. I observe what words do, and act accordingly.
Etymology is fascinating, and has some influence on how language is actually used–but it’s only one influence, and it’s got no governing authority. Tradition is wonderful, but again, it wields no language scepter.
“Disapprobation,” on the rare occasions folks use it, is generally used to mean “disapproval.” If someone uses it to mean “disapproval” and their audience understands them to mean disapproval, then they have communicated effectively.
If they use it with that meaning and their audience understands them to mean “banana pie,” then they have not communicated effectively.
If they use it to mean “banana pie” and their audience understands them to mean “disapproval,” then they have not communicated effectively.
If they use it to mean “banana pie” and their audience understands them to mean “banana pie,” then they have communicated effectively.
HOWEVER, only one of these is likely; therefore, the intelligent speaker will use “disapprobation” to mean “disapproval,” in anticipation of the likely audience response.
As soon as the meaning of “disapprobation” begins to meander–as soon as a significant portion of the audience starts to understand the word as meaning “banana pie”–then the intelligent speaker will modify her use of the word accordingly.
I’m so sorry this trembles the ground beneath you, but it’s just an acknowledgment of how language works.
Daniel
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Close, but oh so wrong!
Your own words contradict you. Have you not stated, in so many words, that a word **should ** communicate effectively? To that purpose, should not a meaning be consistent?
If you have read my posts you will see that I have acknowledged how language works. You are a much more effective communicator (and I think you are a damn fine one) when you are not being prissily sarcastic.
A word works better if its meaning is relatively consistent; I agree; what I disagree about is the degree of consistency necessary for language to function. Specifically, if a word changes in meaning, the only judge of whether it’s fulfilling its communicative function is whether the audience understands the speaker.
Contrapuntal, go back and reread your post to which I was responding, then come here and tell me that you’re in any position to accuse me of prissy sarcasm. Here’s a refresher course for you:
Are you really so sure you should be removing the splinter from my eye? I mean, hell, it’s almost as if woody accused me of being smug.
Daniel
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
I am not sure if you disagree with me on that issue. I am not aware of asserting anything about a “degree of consistency”. I just don’t think a word should change it’s definition just because someone is unaware of what the definition is.
See my Twain quotation above. This whole “the audience understands the speaker” approach is an idealized philosophy that to me has little real world reference. Suppose I am speaking to a group of twenty. They are my audience. Half of them understand me when use the I word “imply”, the other half does not. Is that word used effectively? Or is my audience now just ten? It must be one or the other. If you are "going to define “effective” as “that which the audience understands” and define audience as “that which understands the word” I fear you have the snake biting it’s tail.
If language is as you say it is then it must have been ever thus. Why is it only in the last 40 years or so that proclaiming that there is such a thing as proper usage has become taboo?
Oh I was being sarcastic, no doubt. I just was not being prissy. The earth does not shudder beneath my feet because someone disagrees with me. Perhaps we disagree on what prissy means. It’s tough to be precise when your audience numbers in the hundreds and you don’t even know who they are. It kind of makes one wish for a standardized list of definitions, or something.
[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
A word should not (and will not) change because of one person’s mistake, no. But when a large enough group of people begin to assign a meaning to a word, that word’s meaning is redefined (or defined, if it’s a new word).
One person does not a language make.
[QUOTE]
Agreed. So may I assume that in your mind it is at least theoretically possible for someone to use a word incorrectly?
[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Check post #85 in this thread.
[QUOTE=BayleDomon]
Sorry. Either I scanned through that one, or forgot it. In any case, my mistake.