“jogging” doesn’t begin and end with the same sound, but I fear my playfulness is being misinterpreted… I am claiming that, were I to posit such a rule, it would have just as much validity as “You cannot use ‘nauseous’ to mean ‘nauseated’, even though English speakers overwhelmingly do”. Which is to say, none; the problem with both “rules” is exactly the same: they don’t correspond to the actual facts of how people speak. I was trying to show off the silliness of clinging to such nonsense in the face of this kind of counter-evidence. I’m saddened that it apparently didn’t work.
ETA: Yeah, you caught the “jogging” thing. We must be talking past each other or something, though, because I saw myself as basically on your side.
Then it ain’t gonna matter if you iz hung, hanged, or hawt. Irregardless of that, you can dee-liver yr speach from the lectern or the podium without fear.
I usually take the side of the purists in these things, but this one strikes me as especially quixotic and a little pretentious, like still insisting that “kids” refer to goats and human young should only be called “children.” The meanings of words are in how they are used. There is no celestial source for meanings.
If this were GD I would be much more forgiving. Hell, little terms like this is more of a simple poll than anything else.
(Do not judge me on this - I was simply trying to burn off some energy on the pit. Then someone appeared to take a swipe at my wife and the internet gloves had to come off)
Perhaps my problem is that I only read books written in the last fifty years or so; ergo, very little archaic and obsolete terminology works its way into my vocabulary.
(And I did claim to have read “a fair bit” - and I did take a swipe at Algher’s credulity towards his wife’s claims (not at his wife herself). For the record.)
Algher, in post #48, you accused begbert2 of claiming to have never heard “nauseous” to mean “nauseated”. Which he never did. What you’ve shown is that he claimed to have never heard “nauseous” to mean “nauseating”. Presumably, you slipped up in post #48, causing this confusion.
(To begbert2: Yeah, the credulity was swiped at. But, as you say, that’s no swipe at his wife. I see that I myself have now caused some more confusion by appearing to deny that you claimed great literacy, when the claim I was actually denying you made was of never having heard… ah, what a morass. Well, things are probably settling down now, anyway.)
The thing that bothers me most about people who use “hung” for “executed” is not that it’s wrong – although it is wrong – but that everyone in America has been told this usage multiple times. It’s ALWAYS taught in schools. AND it’s easy to remember. You’d have to be stupid – bone-stupid – lazy, or just plain disrespectful, disrepectful of your listeners and your mother tongue, to get this wrong after maybe the age of ten.
