Fun. It’s such a nice word.
But nothing that is more fun has ever been, or will ever be funner, and the most fun you ever had will never be the funnest.
sometimes, I just want to smack people (but I never do).
Maybe your fellow student was aware of Squoze, a lemon-flavored beverage that was briefly available in Ohio, and perhaps throughout the USA. I don’t recall the exact period during which I saw Squoze advertised, but I’d guess early or mid-1970’s.
overlyverbose: The past tense of “plead” you prefer is spelled pled, just as a leader is someone who has led. Or so I’ve red – er, read.
It always bothered me that Pres. Bush was worried about Saddam having nucular weapons.
No it isn’t. “Oriented” is a good word, and it means at the lowest level to be turned toward the east. “Disoriented” means to have lost one’s bearings- specifically, the rising sun. “Disorientated” means you’ve not only lost your bearings, you’ve gained a syllable.
The pressing of an entire statement or imperative into service as an adjective. As in The Leave No Child Behind Act.
According to dictionary.com, it’s a word? as well as the fact it gives other defintions at the bottom of the page by like 5 other dictionaries.
/Shadez
Well, a participle can be used as an adjective, as in a howling storm or a rising tide. And so sportswriters find themselves talking about a team’s winningest coach.
Where I’m headed is that while I’ve been called a grammar-Nazi more than once, I don’t have a problem with winningest. YM obviously Vs, though.
“Verbing weirds langauge”
Calvin & Hobbes
I recently came across incentivization to my total befuddlement.
No - she was just a ditz. Most of us who hung out in the student lounge were well aware of her ditzitude. You’ll have to trust me on that one. 
It happened in Baltimore in 1973, and I don’t recall a product called Squoze.
Hi dutchboy. Yes it is. Sorta.
The oriented/ orientated divide is as wide as the Atlantic Ocean. Pretty much “orientated” is a British useage while “oriented” is preferred in the U.S.. Did you know they both come from the same French verb? And were introduced into into English about 150 years apart? Even United Statesian dictionaries admit it’s a synonym for “oriented” and means "to face or turn to the east ".
Sometimes I do a little research to verify my claims around here.
More fun? That just sounds wrong. Do you also say more sad and more large?
I like neologisms, especially if they’re useful like neitherbody or penpenultimate.
My Linguists professor commented the other day how Bush had shortened “terrorism” and “terrorist” to “terrism” and terrist."
Something to do with the natural simplification of language. I dunno, I wasn’t paying much attention.
I already knew this, but we also learned in school that there were no such words as funner and funnest. The terms never appeared in any dictionary I’d ever used. I just looked in the Webster Unabridged Dictionary, 1981 edition, and those words are not in there. However, at m-w.com, they are listed as “sometimes funner and funnest” under the inflected form of adjective.
It seems as though modern dictionaries are making concessions for people who never learned to speak the language properly in the first place.
“Funner” and “funnest” are becoming ‘real’ words because the language has the tendancy to regulate itself. Most adjectives follow the x, x-er, x-est format, so doesn’t it seem natural that the abberations would eventually follow?
Remember that language is a totally arbitrary system, it evolves regardless of any ‘offical’ rules.
Don’t be surprised to find that ‘funner’ and ‘funnest’ are 100% acceptable 20 years from now.
Yeah, English changes. I’m sure soon it’s going to pass me right by. There are still people alive who were probably taught in school that nice is not to be used to mean “agreeable”.
Is there a reason why you felt it necessary to make a passive-aggressive insult directed squarely at me? You don’t seem to be a very “agreeable” person.
Blargh. I knew I got something wrong. Sorry 'bout that. Still hate pleaded, though.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you at all. I was just using that as an example of how something that was once colloquial is now perfectly acceptable. Sincerely, I have no quarrel with you. Again, I apologize.
OK, friend. No harm, no foul. I apologize too, if I seemed to overreact. 