Not necessary literal, but sensical. Would you talk about cooking a right until its done? Or dolling up a right?
When the metaphor as spelled makes no sense, and there’s a similarly spelled word that fits the usage precisely, the simplest explanation is there has been a spelling mistake. Yes, one could come up with some weird usage that vaguely justifies the misspelling, but I’d rather point out the error.
I think the confusion is about the actor.
It seems to me that the paragraph is not contemplating citizens with guns waiving their OWN rights, but others (hand) waving away the idea that gun ownership is a right.
You cannot waive someone else’s right – only your own. Therefore I say it’s technically not an error, albeit a puckish word choice in that context, since it is so close to the word “waive.”
The actor is the collective we, as in all Americans, who are setting public policy and considering waiving our second amendment right away.
Are you actually looking or merely deciding that since your idiolect doesn’t have it, it cannot exist?
So not all idioms fit all uses - this is no surprise, but “wave away” is pretty much the same as “brush off” - and if someone says they were “given the brush off”, I don’t look around for a physical brush.
Both, really. Are you saying it exists in yours, and thus assuming it must be what Cecil meant?
Drowning, not waiving
Yes, and it’s sensical to “brush off” a person idiomatically because it’s plausible to “brush off” a person literally. Would you consider the phrasing “it eats at the heart of the constitutional process to simply brush that right off” to be reasonable? It looks bizarre to me.
I don’t recall ever having said it but I wouldn’t put it past me. As I said before, I can see the arguments for waive and wave and I don’t care for either formulation but if I had to choose one over the other, Pleonast’s version would be slightly less grating.
It’s also possible to brush off a suggestion, an idea, a regulation, etc - I don’t think the existence of a literal dimension is even slightly relevant.
You’ve got a problem with ‘wave away’ and ‘brush off’ as non-literal idioms, but no problem with ‘eats at the heart’? Whose actual literal beating heart is being consumed?
Apologies - it appeared you were implying familiarity with the expression.
Me too, except the other way. I guess the only solution is for someone to contact Cecil and ask him what the hell he meant. My money is on the answer being: “exactly what I said”
It’s fairly difficult to literally brush off a person. I mean, people tend to be fairly heavy, so if one is sitting on you, it is a challenge to remove them with a light brushing motion, even if using a standard brush. You can literally brush off lint or dirt or a hat or an insect, but not a person. The idiom “brush off” refers to quickly removing and dismissing something that is on you with a light rubbing motion. When you brush off a person, you are figuratively giving them a quick dismissal. The idiom does not refer to running a brush across another person to remove stuff from them. It refers to running a brush across yourself to remove stuff from you.
“Brush off” works better as a two word expression, so, while inserting the object of brush after the verb brush is grammatically sensible and perhaps nominally preferred by some “standard”, it reads somewhat better to say “simply brush off that right”. In that wording, I would totally accept that as a reasonable replacement for “simply wave that right away”.
Waiving a right is the right holder deciding not to use it. Waving away a right is dismissing the right of someone else with a cursory and inattentive act.
The problem is not the collective group of Americans deciding we no longer need this right. The problem is one limited group of Americans deciding that all Americans do not need this right.
Man, you must have a really good ear to be able to hear the difference.
To nitpick – having read some threads lately, I’m pretty sure that some parties to the policy discussion are absolutely determined not to consider, entertain, or allow waiving the right. Therefore, it makes no sense to discuss “we, as in all Americans, … are … considering waiving our second amendment right away,” since we’re manifestly not a monolithic bloc on this issue. Whereas it does make sense to say some parties to the discussion are considering waiving the right for all of us – including those who do not wish to. And thus my “you cannot waive someone else’s right” comment seems to clear (if convoluted) sense, and the other interpretation…less so.
Uh, everybody, I think Pleonast is whooshing us here, starting right up there with his OP.
The proposed phrase “waive away” as OP suggests seems to have excess and perhaps redundant words (where else would you waive something but away?) besides that the words don’t seem to quite fit together well as “wave away” does.
What else would you expect from a Pleonast?
Foment.
Seems to me that an individual can waive his/her rights, and no one would think that it “eats at the heart of the constitutional process.” Individuals waive rights all the time, that’s PART of the constitutional process. However, Cecil is taking about the collective (rather than the individual) simply discarding the right entirely with a wave of the hand – that, indeed, eats at the heart of the constitutional process.
The grammatical nit-pick about whether one can “waive away” seems less convincing than the substantive argument that waiving a right is NOT undermining the constitutional process.
And, by the way, this sort of deep pun is one that Cecil enjoys. There’s the bit about using entomologist in a discussion about vocabulary (see: Does the average American student have less vocabulary today than in days gone by? - The Straight Dope ), where, yes, he means a statement has been attributed to an entomologist.
I think your cite doesn’t support you. Cecil is not talking about voluntarily relinquishing rights, so 4a and 4b of waive are inappropriate. Definition 6 for waive works, but it baldly states: Influenced by wave.
For you to argue that Waive def. 6 is legitimate, and Wave def. 3 is not legitimate when the former is a derived from the latter… well, it doesn’t seem like honest argumentation.