I think this post deserves a kudo 
I saw what you did there!
It seems perfectly Olden Kinder to me.
I might even say it’s perfectly cromulent, and everything’s copasetic.
lol. I missed it, so thanks!
I got in an argument the other day (silly me) over whether “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is a word. I said it wasn’t. They said it was in the dictionary, I bet it wasn’t in my 1980’s American Heritage unabridged.
I was wrong; it was there, listed as a “nonsense word”. I was wrong. I should have said that it didn’t exist before Disney’s Mary Poppins put it into play, and that any meaning it has isn’t based on any etymology but rather due to its use (and invention) in the movie.
Silly me.
In any case, English dictionaries tend to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. The presence of something in a dictionary doesn’t make it acceptable in formal writing. One has to actually read the entry to see whether it’s slang, etc.
Actually, it predates the Disney movie. Its origin was recently discovered. Now what do you have to say?
How kind of you. You have my most sincere thank.
Yup, I’m on board with all of that. My objection is to weemart’s suggestion that “b4 should replace before” and “b4 is the preferred spelling”. It shouldn’t, and it isn’t. I have no objection to adding “b4” to dictionaries as a variant spelling of “before” if readers are likely to encounter it.
On the half-dozen or so forums to which I contribute, the use of txt spch is actively discouraged by the members, and its use is likely to trigger a chorus of uncomplimentary comments.
The Sherman brothers’ work for Disney, and the first big-screen use of that word, are shown in Saving Mr. Banks, now playing at a theater near you. It’s about Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) wooing and winning over P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), creator of Mary Poppins, for the rights to her books. Very good movie.
Hah! Ignorance fought! Thanks.
Nice to know we’re not alone.
Probably the linguists who research this sort of thing should ask the subject to sing a word like “mirror” or “squirrel” over two adjacent pitches in a melody. If the person sings “skwu-uurl” or “mee–eer” then the words are monosyllabic as he or she pronounces them. By contrast, if the bisyllabic pronunciation seems standard to the subject, they’ll sing “skwer-rel” and “mir-ror”.
This occurred to me on noticing that Kurt Cobain clearly sings “Broke our meers” in “Lithium”, but in “Dream On” Steve Tyler definitely sings “in the mirror”, rhyming the last word with “clearer”.
“Realtor” was invented as a professional title by the industry, because they thought “estate agent” (or, more typically in the States, “real estate agent”) wasn’t grand enough. There’s nothing terrible about that as far as I’m concerned, let them be realtors. But many of us can’t handle the pronunciation of the word, so they stick the extra syllable in between “real-” and “-tor”–thus"real-a-tor". It’s probably the same people who say “ath-a-lete”.
The ones who do this are mostly the same people who talk about “airs” in software or grammar tests, or allude to the War On Tear.
This discussion brings to mind, a “can’t resist” little verse by Ogden Nash (trust him to confuse things still further).
A virile young squirrel named Cyril,
In an argument over a girl –
Was lambasted from here to the Tyrol
By a churl of a skwerl called Earl.
Maybe I shouldn’t mention the grey tree rats that invaded this country, and are ousting our much prettier red variety.
Fellow-Brit, I’m right with you on that one. The subject came up on a thread on GQ, “Does anyone know what happened to the gray squirrel population?”, started 09-24-2009 and “bumped” in summer 2013. I raised there, the matter of grey squirrels introduced from America, ousting the British red. The rejoinder came from an American poster: “We’ll take back the squirrels when you take back the starlings !”
It’s hanged! Two different words (ought to) signify two different things (as much as possible)!
If so, does this mean that back in college, I bung my girlfriends? That just doesn’t sound right.
What have you got against synonyms?
I conclude you don’t have any in your avenue. They appear over here, fetching our activities.