I’ve finally given up on nauseous, which USED to mean “causing nausea.” The sick feeling in your stomach meant you were NAUSEATED. But the language has moved on without me.
I’ll just keep on using the old terms in the old meanings. Everybody else can do what they want.
Wherefore are all these words so vexing, forsooth???
Your cited usages, while obviously not the most common usages, still support my initial contention that bring/take depends on the perspective, whether physical or figurative. In those examples you give, they all jibe with my understanding, and are different from matt’s.
A dictionary lists exceptions, too, if common usage has any such exceptions. Everyone here knows that almost all the words brought to this thread as examples have misusages common enough that they will eventually, if they haven’t already, appear in a dictionary under that usage. That’s not what this thread is about. In fact, none of these examples would be relevant to this thread unless there WERE such widespread misusage. So, no, a dictionary entry is not necessarily a valid cite, in a thread that is explicitly more interested in prescriptive grammar than descriptive.
Did you really used to use nauseous instead of nauseating? Even among people who know the “old” definition of nauseous I always heard “That food was nauseating” as opposed to “That food was nauseous.” (maybe I should go to better parties)
Which dictionary are you using that doesn’t list some variant of “sexually attractive” as a definition of nubile?
Indeed.
Sushi is not raw fish. It is the pressed, cold vinegared rice that the fish is served with, or also the name for the rice and the topping together.
There are many varieties of sushi that don’t use fish at all, such as cucumber, avocado. Some restaurants also serve salad, pasta or fruit sushi. You could even fry up a cheeseburger and legitimately call it sushi if you serve it on vinegared rice.
However, sushi also encumbers any number of dishes that use plain or simply salted rice instead of vinegared rice.
I always understood it (and used it infrequently) to mean that while a statement was amusing or clever, I myself took no enjoyment from hearing it. Sort of like saying ‘yes, very clever’, in a bored tone of voice.
Looking for an actual definition I see that while not entirely incorrect, I haven’t been using it quite right. Now what do I use?
I disagree here. It seems to me that the essence of the joke is the assertion that a military acting intelligently is in fact a semantic impossibility. The correct meaning of “oxymoron” isn’t lost, but is applied to give unexpected and absurd force to what would otherwise be a simple statement of opinion regarding the capabilities of the military. The result has a humorous effect that would be lost if you only said “military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.”
“Presently”, at least in UK usage, has meant “Now” for a very, very long time (since at least the 15th Century, IIRC). The “In Due Course”, “In the immediate future”, or “Shortly” definition is a more recent one, but still correct.
So to be clear, authoritative texts on the English language are not valid cites, but you are.
Gosh, why did I invest in a dictionary?
But, since **matt_mcl **seems to have a much better understanding of the issue, I’m still going with his explanation.
Okay.
Would you consider “sexually attractive” to be a physical description? I mean, if you were talking to a police sketch artist, would the phrase convey any information he’d find useful?
So, you’re saying that most men wouldn’t want to marry a “firm-fleshed young woman”? :dubious:
“Carry” is a word which gets abused by Southerners. I frequently hear someone say they had to “carry so and so to work.” Meaning that they had to give them a ride, and not carry the person on their back.
I think you mean “encompasses” as opposed to encumbers.
prodigal
Most people think it means wayward or gone astray. It actually means spendthrift or profligate.
The confusion comes from the Biblical proverb of the prodigal son, who had gone astray and spent a lot of money. The “prodigal” in the title of the proverb describes the spent a lot of money part, not the gone astray part.
I don’t understand some of you. You say that word X is being used incorrectly and then admit that Webster’s dictionary says that such alternate use has been acceptable since the Normans invaded England, but for some reason you still don’t feel that it should be used.
Why?
“Penultimate” I’ll give you, but “decimate?”
I’m as pedantic and prescriptivist as they come, but even I have to admit that “reduced by a tenth” is so vanishingly rare a use as to not need a word, whereas “almost completely destroyed” is so common that a shortening would be useful: especially one that even sounds like “destroyed.”
I have not yet been appointed final arbiter of language (I think Obama’s working on the announcement now), but I can’t imagine that the “reduced by a tenth” folks are going to win this in the long run (or even the short one). Better, I think, to use our energies to pull “penultimate” and “literally” back from the edge while there’s still time.
Yes, “sexually attractive” is a physical description. No, it’s not particularly useful to a sketch artist, since it’s thoroughly subjective. Wouldn’t you agree that pretty, ugly, cute, easy-on-the-eyes, hunky, and babealicious are all physical descriptions?
I’m not sure what any of that has to do with the definition of “nubile,” though. I just said that “available for marriage” is only one definition of the word, and every dictionary I’ve looked in lists some variant of “sexually attractive” as one of the definitions.
This, of course, creates yet another situation where a word can be legitimately used in highly confusing ways: a cute married woman is “nubile” in one sense, where a young available unattractive woman is “nubile” in the other.
Most people I’ve heard use the word meant it to encompass both meanings with an undertone of “young.”
I’ll use it on your behalf, just to be nice.