And I don’t care what anyone says, a vagina is not a vulva anymore than a mouth is a face.
I saw what you did there.
I’m still all pissed off about that buffalo thing.
Oslo is gonna be pissed.
The first time I’ve laughed in 24 hours.
The only one that chaps my ass is the use of literally to mean figuratively. I mean, what the hell? Can’t we have a word that literally means literally?
No, I’m merely easily amused by people who think gender differences are that simplistic and work that reliably in terms of linguistic usage. The folks at Language Log often have a field day with such things and I happen to be a fan of theirs, as you can verify with my usual contributions to linguistic threads. This is an apt entry of theirs. This is another, and explains my laugh reflex a little better. When the ‘science’ lives down to those standards, it’s difficult to take the field at all seriously.
Look in M-W or the OED. By all means don’t take my word for it.
Yes, I do agree with this and everything beneath it. I was merely taking cheap shots where I found them.
Our day will come.
We may be nauseated by the nauseous usages, but our day will come.
Each time an item is described as “pitch white”, each time something happens that was “literally impossible”, we are closer to the time when our day will come.
Wherever he was all like and she was like all, we gather strength and take one step towards when our day will come.
Though we lack leadership right now, times make the man and a Which (Wich?) Tyler will arise, and our day will come.
Then, you will face the Pedant’s Revolt. Our day will have come.
On that day, the current agenda is for us to briefly come together and mill around without opposition long enough to declare victory. At that point we will fall into factional infighting and make easy pickings for the billions of ESL speakers who have already, in the long run, probably made you descriptivists the Academie Francaise of the next century.
That used to really chap my ass as well. Truly made my blood boil. In fact, I would turn red with rage.
“Non-figuratively” seems to serve perfectly fine to mean, well, non-figuratively. Even if we didn’t have a standard single-word expression for it, having to use a small phrase instead isn’t actually any skin off my nose.
Shakespeare created more of our modern idiom than anyone, you know.
Actually, it’s a reference to what it could be used for, not what it was suppose to be used for: it was the legionary’s complaint about the paucity of his salary.
That is a sin against God and man. Use the original rules, or use English rules, but don’t use anything else. That doesn’t make any damned sense.
Really? I’ve never heard this. Got a cite?
‘Literally’ has been used as an intensifier for centuries. It’s not a new development. Get over it.
Pointless pedantry. The term chastity, as originally used, has no bearing today since the concept for which it was intended to convey effectively no longer exists. Might as well use it for something else.
The OED, Merriam-Webster, and the AHD all agree with me. This thread has a lot more evidence.
Why you’re a regular little Spartacus, exerting all your might to throw off the choking chains of prescriptive pedantry. I remember the passage in The Caine Mutiny, and in order to set the record straight, there’s nothing about this character that is specifically effeminate. For those who don’t know the book, the reference is to a naval officer training school on the campus of Columbia University, and the character referred to is one of the guys who “bilged” (flunked out) partway through the program.
Based on information we have, Merriam Webster notwithstanding, there’s nothing there to suggest that this character, whose appearance is among the most fleeting in all of fiction, actually is effeminate per se. Does he gesture animatedly with limp wrists? Does he skip downstairs to the mess hall holding his roommate’s hand? We don’t know because all we ever learn about him is that he is good natured and has been raised by maiden aunts. Sure, he may have been bereft of a father figure, and I don’t doubt that the author imagined him rather as a shy quiet unobtrusive type, rather than a macho action film hero type, but that doesn’t necessarily make him effeminate.
The reason we are pedantic is that we care about the language. When words are misused in this way–and confusing one word for a similar but different word is undoubtedly the most common type of error–then one of the words is essentially lost. Now that everyone thinks “effete” means “effeminate”, we no longer have a word for “lacking in vigor, sterile”. If I want to communicate that idea, then I have to write out “lacking in vigor” or “sterile”. Nice going, you barbaric iconoclast, you ruined a perfectly good word. We already had a word for effeminate" – effeminate. Similarly we no longer have flout, or maybe it’s flaunt, I forget which one people use now.
And usages like penultimate to mean “extra special double-secret super-ultimate” are just stupid, being rooted in the foolish notion that an extra syllable or two will make you sound smart. We can’t stop language from changing, but we can certainly decry change which is the result of dumbing down and and which erodes the expressive power of English. And if a mistaken usage comes across as stupid and ill-educated, we call it for what it is.
You eat double shit a zillion times over.
Oh, the horror!
Yeah, and we already had and still have a word for “sterile” – sterile.
Sure, let’s use “Physically”!
No, you don’t. You care about being pedantic.
But effete, in the sense of “sterile” is entirely negative. Sterile can go either way depending on the context. I’m not denying your point completely, but just pointing out that there were different spins on the two words (or are still for us pedants).
And you think I don’t? I’m a writer. (I’m now collecting money for writing, albeit not enough to say I earn my living with it… yet) I love the English language for all its nuances, its grace, its vast scope of expression. I’m still learning new words on a near-daily basis. I’ve studied Latin and although I’m no linguist, it delights me to trace the etymologies of words I’ve been using all my life and see how they evolved.
But the point is that they evolve. Here’s a passage from our very own Chaucer (from the prologue of Canterbury Tales):
Note the first line - multiple negatives! Not to mention spelling that would likely get him laughed off the SDMB…
Purists have been complaining about the imminent decay of their respective languages for thousands of years. But language is a living vehicle of human expression that has always managed to conquer those misguided attempts at prescription and I don’t see why you think you’re going to be successful now.
Have I ever lamented witnessing the usage of a word slowly transform out of pure ignorance of its original intended meaning? Sure, absolutely. But there comes a point where you really need to give it up and just go with it.