I am fucking sick of having GWB make up new forms to the english language. But what really pisses me off is the incorrect use of the transitive verb grow.
" we need to grow the economy" etc. etc.
This is incorrect. cite
When will this shit end?
PS. I’m not a prescritive grammarian, but I sure as hell don’t like THAT jackass changing the language. He’s fucked up everything else that he’s touched, imagine if we all of a sudden had to speak GWB’s english?
I hate the growing trend of using the verb “grow” in the transitive sense when talking about something other than plants, but it’s pretty well entrenched by now and there’ll probably be no going back.
Personally, I love it when GWB pretends that the words he’s using are new. For example, about a year ago he was making a big deal out of using the words “revisionist history,” as though he had just invented them out of whole cloth. For example…
“Some people want to pretend this never happened. These people – I call them revisionist historians – (pause, smirk, wait for “oooohs” and “aaaahs” that never come) are wrong.”
Yeah, Dubya? Just because a word is new to you doesn’t mean it’s new to everyone else. We’re not impressed. You look like a comedian whose joke just fell flat.
It took me a whole 2 seconds on google to find this:
Environmental protection: “It is no longer necessary to choose between growing the economy and preserving, and even improving, the environment,” Clinton said.
And revisionist historians are the best, aren’t they. I forget how he used it, but it seems like it was extreme irony as he was the one actually doing the revising, from WMD being the key cause of the war to Terrorism. That was before he went to liberations of Iraqis. We’ll see how he sold the war last year again when he revises it later to. “Just kinda got boring around unka karls playroom”
Really, OPs of grammar rants (especially particularly dubious ones) have a certain obligation to preview their posts for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
The irony is, ‘cite’ as a noun always used to supposed to be ‘citation’, didn’t it?
Anyway, OT1H words being extended in obvious ways are good when they’re useful, OTOH, there must be a better word than ‘grow’ here (though maybe not - none springs to mind) but OTGH whether you mind Bush messing with the language this is hardly the most prominent example, is it?
Good point. Though it suddenly occurs to me I’m not sure if there is or not a difference between “making the economy larger”, “making the economy stronger” and “YOU’RE ALL GETTING RICHER! VOTE FOR ME!” in anyone’s mouths…
However, I don’t think it’s a terrible usage, if you consider it a gardening metaphor, perhaps? There are a TON of worse ways he could express the concept:
Your protesterations are in vain. The President has previouserly been permittated to get away with this and win votes. He now conversinalates in the expectitude of never facing correctification.
Hey, whatever happened to the concept of “the king’s english”? That is, however the king speaks IS proper english, by definition – everybody ELSE had better adapt!
Oh wait, that’s right. We got rid of the king some 227 years ago. Never mind