The others have pretty covered it, but just to stick a stake right in the heart of the matter. …
The prefix “in”- usually, but not always means “not”. By word count it’s about 80% “not” and about 20% a marker of long ago adjectivization of a noun. But by modern count of usage, the “in-” = “not” words are far more common.
Back in the early 20th century when warning signs on stuff started to be common the signs all said “Inflammable”. Because that’s correct English.
Eventually somebody somewhere in the government safety bureaucracy realized that most Americans were not well-educated enough to tell the two meanings of “in-” apart. So the totally BS word “flammable” was coined to put on warning signs.
Idiocracy has a long-running pedigree in this country.
And now you know
The rest of the story …
Good Day.
You might choose to do so, but every person involved with making a dictionary will tell you that it is only a descriptive authority, not a prescriptive one. Your entire argument is an appeal to authority and lexicographers explicitly reject such appeals.
The opposite of flammable is obviously non-flammable.
Perusing this thread reminds me of the George Carlin routine, that points out one phrase that I never understood is: “near miss.” It’s an aviation-safety term to describe when aircraft come dangerously close in proximity during flight, risking a collision. I prefer Carlin’s suggestion that it be called “a near hit”.
But one that does irk me, is one these damn-fool kids are using nowadays*: “[something] is sick”. For example:
- “Dood, that new Taylor Swift song is soooo sick!”
- “Dude, you totally nailed it with that insult in the Pit. . . sick burn!”
- “Cyberpunk 2077 looks like such a sick game, man!”
I don’t get it. When did adjectives like “awesome,” “cool,” and “mildly nifty” get replaced with “sick?” I don’t have teenagers in the house, nor in my sphere of influence. Is this still a thing?
Tripler
I’m not sick. I’m quite well, actually.
Doesn’t seem all that different than saying that something you really like is “bad.”
. . . and I can only think of the term “bad” as an 80’s reference, thanks to Michael Jackson. The only current use of “bad” is when it’s tagged to another possibly negative term, to create a positive term about a person: “badass.” “Bad” is a negative. Someone who’s an “ass” is a negative. But when someone’s a “badass”, mathematically that’s -1 * -1 = 1.
Maybe I just have to wait another 30 - 40 years for “sick” to evolve or become more frequent, before I get it.
Tripler
Hopefully I won’t be sick in 30 - 40 years.
It’s quite possible this has already been mentioned, but “she shed” similarly drives me batshit. “Craft room” I get. I have friends who have craft rooms because they own large equipment dedicated to crafts such as embroidery machines, drafting tables for patterns and sewing machines. They legitimately need a room to hold that stuff so it’s not in the way. Everyone in the family uses it because it’s the place with the huge table you can work on, the pencils, rulers, etc. It’s like a garage. Garages hold cars and outdoor stuff. If you need to do something messy that requires a cement floor, you do it out there.
The implication that a room is dedicated only to a specific gender, though, is obnoxious for the same reasons noted above.
Sorry, but no. Descriptive dictionaries comprise the majority of current publications, but it wasn’t always thus. The first edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (1969), for example, included notes from their “Usage Board” (preeminent writers ranging from Asimov to Steinem) regarding ‘correct’ definitions and usages: 93% of the Usage Board agreed that disinterested was not a synonym for uninterested, and the entire board agreed that simultaneous could not be used as an adverb. That school of thought is old-fashioned now; the current staff at Merriam-Webster, e.g., proudly proclaim themselves descriptivists in opposition to the ‘other’ school of lexicography, the prescriptivists.
If that’s what you meant, then we were indeed talking about different things.
I will say here that my position on what is widely scorned as “prescriptivism” is more nuanced than what those who have dumped on me in the past seem to think it is. I think this French idea of a single official “language authority” is absurd, and the quest for “linguistic purity” seems to stem from a uniquely Gallic worship of their language and culture. I much prefer the attitude towards English, well expressed by the admirable Canadian James Nicoll: “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
That said, two basic things that irk me about abuses of English are (1) needless artificial constructs, as in biz-speak, which serve only to obfuscate and whose only purpose is to create a sort of pompous in-group mystique, and most importantly, (2) misuse of language due to ignorance. This is where I part company with many linguists, who insist on referring to such solecisms as “non-standard”, whereas in most cases this is just a euphemism for “just plain wrong”, often because the speaker is just parroting something he misheard, or doesn’t know what a word means.
I decline to participate further in what is essentially a ridiculous circular argument. Put as simply as possible, there is a reason that dictionaries exist. There is a reason that they are found in the “reference” sections of libraries and bookstores, and not in the “fantasy” section. The language, and society, would be well served if more people were aware of their contents.
This is not accurate wrt English btw as the Oxford English often reflects organic developments of the language (from the OED website for the 2020 edition: " More than 500 new words, sub-entries, and revisions have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in our latest update, including *[ clockwork orange ], [follically challenged ] , and *[ adulting] .") Adulting may be a word that fits into the theme of this thread but it obviously hasn’t been proscribed by the greatest of the “great books”.
Also, Samuel Johnson first created his dictionary in order to “fix” (as in stabilize and standardize, not repair) the English language.
I don’t think you’ve adequately understood my various responses here, in particular the last two. Of course almost all dictionaries are ultimately descriptive (there are exceptions – Noah Webster was instrumental in the introduction of Americanized spelling, in contrast to that of the rest of the English world). That descriptivist nature is inherent in the fact that language evolves.
But they are also very important reference works regarding the state of the language at any given point in time. The fact that language evolves, and that dictionaries necessarily follow rather than lead this evolution, at least most of the time, does not detract from the fact that such reference works are valuable in fighting ignorance. Unless, that is, you believe that someone saying “I wood of gone to the party if I wood of nown she wuz their” is just a brilliant new dialect of English.
So you appeal to an authority that is 50 years out of date and is disclaimed by all current lexicographers?
They exist for the same reason that many other scientific references exist, to record and explain observed phenomena.
I keep checking back when I see new posts here, in hopes of seeing, oh, I don’t know, maybe a few Phrases/terms that aggravate the hell out of you…
Sigh…
I have the impression that sick = awesome was a short-lived vernacular that, while still in occasional use, peaked over a decade ago and is either fading or going into a sort of linguistic hibernation.
How about pronouncing fewer letters in order to sound more sophisticated.
Concierge (con-see-AIR)
Bancorp (bank-core)
Coup de grace (coo-de-GRAH)
Others? I was thinking that at first this would be uniquely French to American English, but Bancorp is a mistake in assuming it is bank corps rather than a contracted form of bank corporation.
This is probably about my hijack. My sincere apologies digs & everyone else.
Well, the link in that same paragraph is to a current batch of lexicographers who don’t seem to be disclaiming it. The staff at Merriam-Webster say they adhere to the descriptivist camp, but don’t pour scorn on what they claim is the “competing” prescriptivist camp.
Oh, and the most recent print edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (5th edition, 2011) still has their Usage Panel, still “gaug[ing] the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions,” and they are still printing the Usage Panel’s opinions in the online version.