The once-great newspaper, the Washington Post, apparently has decided to do away with editors entirely, as I catch word choice errors and grammatical errors almost every time I read it.
Today’s gem comes from the Sports page. I don’t expect literary talent in sportswriting; I don’t even expect sound grammatical construction. I’d just like to have a clue what the hell they’re trying to say.
Okay, I get that Washington was bad last year (“that pitiful team”) and they had something to prove (“exorcism”).
What the heck is “pilfered” doing in that second sentence? Pilfered means “stole,” as in “to take without asking.” As far as I know, it has no alternative definition, nor any idiomatic interpretation. I’d think any human, English-speaking editor reading this piece would have noticed this strange word choice…hence I assume the Post isn’t editing these things.
From context, it looks like the writer meant “wasted the season.” But probably he had some word in mind when he wrote “pilfered.” I’m amusing myself guessing what that might have been.
Any guesses as to what word he thought he was using?
I’m guessing the writer meant “piffled”. Typed something like “pilefed”. The spell-checker caught the mistake, and suggested as a replaced “pilfered”. The writer or editor absent-mindedly accepted the suggestion.
Does “that pitiful team that came to Lincoln Financial Field a year ago…” refer to the Redskins or the Eagles? I’m not sure. (It is the closest named team to the description).
Because it makes since if last year the Eagles were predicted to generally sucky team, but Philadelphia came to DC, kicked the Redskins’ butts, and so demoralized the Redskins that the Redskins could no longer play a decent game for the rest of the season, and then the Eagles went to the playoffs. In that way, the Eagles could have “pilfered” the season away from the Redskins.
But I don’t see how the Redskins could pilfer their own season away from themselves.
That was the first thing I thought of, too, but even that doesn’t make any sense because the Redskins didn’t host the Eagles until week 14, when the Redskins were already 3 and 9. Not much of a season left to steal. There was no way they were going to the playoffs even if they had beat the Eagles.
