People who are still able to communicate -- guess what word the Post really meant!

[RickJay]

@askeptic

Since you’re here, how about an acknowledgement of the “sportswriting” thing?

“Sportswriting” is a pretty commonly used term, is about a century old, and appears in my dictionary.

[Marley23]

@amarinth

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).

That threw me off, too, and I even wrote a post about how the writer used the correct word (despite an odd phrasing) in saying the Eagles stole Washington’s season. Then I remember that the Eagles play at Lincoln Financial Field, so “that pitiful team” has to be Washington.

[Ludovic]

@askeptic

Oh, you’re a descriptivist. All this time you come across like a prescriptivist.

The main point of the OP is that you can’t even tell what the word meant, thus causing an less than optimal communication to occur. An ohhh so prescriptivist rant :rolleyes:

[armedmonkey]

@Marley23

Then I remember that the Eagles play at Lincoln Financial Field, so “that pitiful team” has to be Washington.

Ah, I didn’t catch that Lincoln Financial is in Philly. So we can ignore my previous post as we have to look at week 10. And I think I know what the guy means! It IS “pilfered”, but still a truly awful sentence construction.

Campbell and his teammates didn’t beat the Eagles on “Monday Night Football” as much as they got rid of the memory of that pitiful team that came to Lincoln Financial Field a year ago and pilfered its season away.

The Redskins were a “pitiful” 3 and 5 when they traveled to Lincoln Financial Field in Philly and lost 27-3. Here’s the important part: The Monday after this game, it was announced that Jason Campbell would replace Mark Brunell as starting quarterback. It was JASON CAMPBELL and the other personnel changes that were made after last year’s loss at Lincoln Financial Field that “pilfered” the starting jobs from the previous lineup (i.e that “pitiful team”) for the rest of the season. If I was going to rewrite that sentence so it makes some semblance of sense (instead of just throwing the damn thing out entirely):

Campbell and his teammates didn’t beat the Eagles on Monday night football so much as they got rid of the memory of the pitiful 'Skins lineup that lost so spectacularly at Lincoln Financial Field a year ago, and who had their starting jobs pilfered by Cambpell and company for the rest of the season

At least that’s what I think he meant. The construction is so bad, it’s hard to tell

[Carnacki]

They’ve a temper, some of them - particularly verbs: they’re the proudest - adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs - however, I can manage the whole lot of them!

Impenetrability! That’s what I say!

Cite

[Sailboat]

@askeptic

Oh, you’re a descriptivist. All this time you come across like a prescriptivist.

Actually I do tend toward prescriptivism. I got interrupted by something almost as important as good grammar, and couldn’t add any qualifiers to my post. It was reply to your summons with that or nothing.

I don’t think, however, that “sportswriting” is a particularly vulnerable word choice. Its use is widespread and has been for a long time. Can’t you pilfer the thread any better?

I’m sensing some aggression. What’s your angle? You’re not Mike Wise, are you?

Sailboat

[susan]

Piffled/frittered conflation.

[Lucky_13]

The sentence in question put me in mind of the Spanish word “despilfarrando”, which means squandering away. Perhaps this word was what the sportswriter had in mind.

[Trunk]

@DeadlyAccurate

Piddled?

I would’ve gone with “squandered.”

Yeah, “piddled away” is sort of in the vernacular.

But, I think of that more in line with “idling away”.

Perhaps a conflation of piddled/frittered, a guy who thought “pilfer away” meant something.

[Garfield226]

A local newspaper has gotten into the habit of using “refute” where they mean “rebut,” and it is getting on my nerves. From three different stories (bolding mine):

[

CARBONDALE - Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard refuted claims made Thursday that he plagiarized parts of a dissertation he wrote as a doctoral student in 1984 and said the anonymous party making such allegations has directly attacked his integrity as an administrator of higher education.

Poshard defended his 24-year-old, 111-page paper during an interview with three members of The Southern Illinoisan news staff. The dissertation, titled “The Provisions for Gifted Children Education from 1977 through 1983 in Twenty-Two Southern Illinois Counties,” was called into question when an anonymous source claimed the second chapter of the paper, a review of related and published educational literature, contained passages lifted from other works without proper citation.

](http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2007/08/30/top/21344220.txt)

[

CARBONDALE - Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard says he did not try to influence the results of two online newspaper polls asking if he should resign his position over recent plagiarism charges.

Poshard refuted claims appearing in a weekend Chicago Sun-Times article that he called the SIUC director of University Christian Ministries, Hugh Muldoon, last Thursday specifically to talk about a survey by the Springfield State Journal-Register’s Web site.

Muldoon and Poshard were on the phone discussing a new interfaith living center that the university ministries has been interested in building for some time, Poshard said.

](http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2007/09/17/top/21539081.txt)

[

Poshard has refuted claims he did anything wrong and has said accusations are being brought against him because he has refused to fold on the demands of a freelance anti-corruption group that an SIU Edwardsville professor, who was fired in 2004, get his job back.

](Poshard calls 3 p.m. press conference, will likely address plagiarism charges)

In my dictionary, “refute” means to prove that an accusation is false, “rebut” means to argue against. The AP Stylebook agrees. Unless they’re making an editorial judgment in a news story, they’re using the wrong word. (sorry to vent)

[Colophon]

@Garfield226

In my dictionary, “refute” means to prove that an accusation is false, “rebut” means to argue against. The AP Stylebook agrees. Unless they’re making an editorial judgment in a news story, they’re using the wrong word. (sorry to vent)

Write to the paper. Someone there probably does care, irregardless of what you might think.

[descamisado]

@plnnr

I, too, am in complete and utter congruency.

As to literary greatness in sports writing, you could certainly find it in Shirley Povich’s stuff (likewise Heywoud Broun).

Even Roger Angell when he isn’t, errrr, I mean, despite the fact that he’s constantly, trying too hard.

I vote for “piffle.”

[ftg]

Newspapers (is that one word or two?) just don’t care about copy editing anymore.

Examples in my local rag lately:

A blurb on the front page of a section for a story inside used the word “advertize”. What country am I in? Inside, the article itself was “advertise” throughout.

One page had a set of 4 photographs. 2 of the 4 captions had obvious errors. One just stopped in mid-sentence.

If I can notice an error in writing, you better believe that it’s a big one.

And that’s not counting the numerous “spell check replacement” errors.

But they of course blame the Web for their problems. Not their content or presentation.

[movingfinger]

Can the word “dwindle” be used as a transitive verb? I seem to recall from law school the idea of “Dwindling away one’s assets”.

No, I can’t be bothered to look it up.