I was just reading a news article and came across this statement from the lawyer for one of the accused (bolding mine):
“My client’s name was unexpectedly national news Friday morning. He was proactive, he called me, I touched base with homicide and within hours we attended together at police headquarters,” said Fagan. “I’m dialled in on securing his release now.”
Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, I’d proactively dial in on dumping that lawyer right now! 
You know who could have gotten fully behind this thread? Benjamin Franklin. Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote Noah Webster about how idiotic new words were infecting the English language:
"I find a verb formed from the substantive notice; ‘I should not have noticed this, were it not that the gentleman, etc.’ Also another verb from the substantive advocate; ‘the Gentleman who advocates or who has advocated that motion, etc.’ Another from the substantive progress, the most awkward and abominable of the three; ‘the committee, having progressed, resolved to adjourn.’ … If you should happen to be of my opinion with respect to these innovations, you will use your authority in reprobating them."
This despite the fact that in his youth, Franklin liked to invent new English words. He took even greater pleasure amusing the ladies of Paris by inventing new French words.
If your point is that the English language evolves, that’s an obvious truism.
My point, and the point of this thread and the point that others are making, is that our language is replete with counterproductive non-standard usages that arise either out of ignorance or out of some self-serving self-aggrandizing pomposity.
These two points are both valid and are not in contradiction. The vast, vast majority of these mutated usages will die out and never be seen again, and meanwhile will irritate us while they persist. If one draws an analogy with biological evolution, they are like the two-headed calf or conjoined twins – evolutionary paths that lead nowhere. We are in the meantime entitled to ridicule the ignorant and the pompous who enable their promulgation.
Certain irony there, in that I cannot ever recall hearing or reading “reprobate” used as a verb. And over the language rolls, like the breakers that fall, slide up the beach and withdraw silently into the foamy brine.
A former Chief Justice of Saskatchewan used “reprobate” as a verb in a significant jurisdictinal case:
https://www.canlii.org/en/sk/skca/doc/1993/1993canlii6744/1993canlii6744.html
And now that the NFL regular season has come to an end, I was excessively exposed to my least favorite and most abused word in sports - clinch. As in “The Bears can lose today and still clinch a playoff spot if Arizona loses.” No, the Bears would win a playoff spot. To “clinch” a spot means to ensure a spot no matter what happens in future games. There are no future games this regular season, so no “clinching”. The Packers clinched the division title several weeks ago - no one could catch them. They WON (not clinched) the #1 seed by winning today. Had they gone undefeated, they would have clinched the #1 seed a couple of weeks ago.
And woe betide one who does resile. Now there’s a word I’ve never encountered. Thank you!
You may be the only person on Earth who makes that particular distinction. Useful though it might be. The entire difference you suppose you see is bvetween:
If each case mathematically it means “the number of remaining games is less than the number it would take for you to be pushed out.”
It taking one game to push you out and there are zero remaining is NOT mathematically different from it taking 6 games to push you out and only 5 remain.
Ignore the second part of my post just above; I mangled the rushed edit. Try this instead:
You may be the only person on Earth who makes that particular distinction. Useful though it might be.
In each case mathematically it means “the number of remaining games is less than the number it would take for you to be pushed out of the playoffs.”
It taking one game to push you out and there are zero remaining is NOT mathematically different from it taking 6 games to push you out and only 5 remain. In either case, you’re mathematically guaranteed to remain in the payoffs. You’ve clinched.
Well, yeah, they came through in the clinch.
. . .
So, a place where your cars can play video games?
Butter!
?
[Remainder of this post is inserted solely to satisfy the Discourse gods.]
Everything is a “space” now.
I think the usual generic term here is “parking garage.”
I thought of that too.
Using the phrase “begs the question” to mean “raises the question” is just wrong. This error was very common some years ago, but I thought that it was finally dying out. Then just last evening a local news anchor used the phrase.
“Begging the question” is a specific logical fallacy:
IME/IMO it’s not dying out. Instead it’s just become so terribly common that nobody even notices anymore how wrong it is.
What annoys me about it is that people who use it think they are being Fancy and Upscale and Smart—“this raises the question” is too common for Fancy people like them, who use “this begs the question” (and thereby reveal not elite status, but ignorance).
It’s like “play a factor”—another false-gentility usage. “Play a role” and “is a factor” aren’t Special enough for these folks—they combine them into a phrase that’s actually sense-free, but (to them) sounds Really Fancy.
And of course that’s another phrase, like “begs the question,” which is so commonly used that its sense-free nature goes unacknowledged.
Perhaps those of us in the know should simply embarrass them in public for their ignorance. DOne early and often we may well prevail.
Gosh, Bob, that sounds really ignorant when you say that like that. I know you don’t want to appear ignorant, so next time you might say it like this instead. Here you’re among friends, but at the next meeting, who knows??