Cecil,
In your piece on “Does the average American student have less vocabulary today than in days gone by” (September 7, 2007), second paragraph, 4th line. Did you mean entomologist (one who studies insects) or etymologist (one who studies word origins)?
tnbob
Blame it on little Ed.
Even if he had in fact meant “entomologists,” it wouldn’t have really changed the point. When people start telling you what the “average vocabulary” of a person is, you have to immediately question how he has arrived at such a figure.
An etymologist is going to be just as suspect as an entomologist, in my book.
Hard to say. Cecil has made his bones as a world-class wise-ass, and is perfectly capable of saying such a thing deliberately.
But it’s probably little Ed’s fault.
This question has come up before. Cecil meant what he said. See this post by Dex. Or I’ll just quote from that thread so you don’t have to click
Thanks, bibliophage, saved me the time and effort of looking it up again. I really wish that, when Cecil made these little jokes, he was more obvious – people ask about this one fairly often.