Bad English.

[coffeejo]

Seems that proper spelling is not as trivial and pedantic as some would like to believe!

http://www.bbc.co.uk...cation-14130854

I saw that and thought of this thread!

 

[Ravenbait]

Spelling and grammar matter to me because I can't necessarily infer the meaning of a sentence if they are incorrect. I know there are those who say a word is what it is commonly accepted to mean, but if a person uses a word I don't know, and I go look it up, I need to know that the definition I've read is the definition they are also using.

Occasionally people seem to forget that words are for communication, and that communication only works if there's a commonality of understanding about what the words mean. I have a tendency to get quite cross about words that are in flux because an incorrect usage is becoming more popular.

"Decimate" is a particular bugbear of mine, because the meaning of the word is embedded in the spelling. "Deci" is the same root as "decimal". I look at that and can't make it mean "utterly destroy" because there's a perfectly good word for that ("annihilate") following the same principle of construction.

I don't want the language to be stuck in aspic, but if people are going to fiddle around with word definitions they should at least do it in a way that makes sense.



Sam

 

[coffeejo]

Isn't 'decimate' a Roman term, relating to the punishment of soldiers: something to do with every tenth man condemned to be beaten to death by nine of his comrades?

 

[srw]

No, that's one of those urban myths that's doing the rounds.

No urban myth - absolute truth.

Polybius gives one of the first descriptions of the practice in the early 3rd century BC:

"If ever these same things happen to occur among a large group of men... the officers reject the idea of bludgeoning or slaughtering all the men involved [as is the case with a small group or an individual]. Instead they find a solution for the situation which chooses by a lottery system sometimes five, sometimes eight, sometimes twenty of these men, always calculating the number in this group with reference to the whole unit of offenders so that this group forms one-tenth of all those guilty of cowardice. And these men who are chosen by lot are bludgeoned mercilessly in the manner described above [see original text]."[sup][4][/sup] Plutarch describes the process in his life of Antony. After a defeat in Media:

"Antony was furious and employed the punishment known as 'decimation' on those who had lost their nerve. What he did was divide the whole lot of them into groups of ten, and then he killed one from each group, who was chosen by lot; the rest, on his orders were given barley rations instead of wheat."[sup][5][/sup]

 

[goo_mason]

"I would of did that" (two for the price of one, there!)

"If you have any questions, please contact myself"

The lattter one is extremely prevalent here at work. People are under the impression that 'myself' is the 'posher' version of 'me'....

 

[Orange]

It amazes me the number of people that write 'loose' when they actually mean lose.

I seem to have been fighting a losing battle against this one for years - still it seems to be the majority of people, unfortunately, that thinks 'loose' is the correct way for describing what losers do.

I wonder what they think is the right way to write what happens when their shoelaces start to come undone?

 

[Mr Phoebus]

I wonder what they think is the right way to write what happens when their shoelaces start to come undone?

Looose.

 

[swee'pea99]

Fall over?

 

[User482]

"I would of did that" (two for the price of one, there!)

"If you have any questions, please contact myself"

Ah, the reflexive pronoun. Beloved of sales people, and intensely irritating.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Ah, the reflexive pronoun. Beloved of sales people, and intensely irritating.

Yes, the commercial director at my place does that, but then himself's a f*cking idiot.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Spelling and grammar matter to me because I can't necessarily infer the meaning of a sentence if they are incorrect. I know there are those who say a word is what it is commonly accepted to mean, but if a person uses a word I don't know, and I go look it up, I need to know that the definition I've read is the definition they are also using.

Occasionally people seem to forget that words are for communication, and that communication only works if there's a commonality of understanding about what the words mean. I have a tendency to get quite cross about words that are in flux because an incorrect usage is becoming more popular.

"Decimate" is a particular bugbear of mine, because the meaning of the word is embedded in the spelling. "Deci" is the same root as "decimal". I look at that and can't make it mean "utterly destroy" because there's a perfectly good word for that ("annihilate") following the same principle of construction.

I don't want the language to be stuck in aspic, but if people are going to fiddle around with word definitions they should at least do it in a way that makes sense.



Sam

Wow, I've found something I disagree with you on. If you really believe the first paragraph, then your last two, err, make less sense. Meaning and communication is also about context, and unless the person you are listening to or reading is talking in the particular context of Roman military discipline (or some analog of it), then it is likely that they will be using it in the modern sense, which is as a synonym for destroy or annihilate. You can't always apply purely internal etymological logic to words; their meanings interact with the world outside the word. And that does make sense - cultural sense. If you are insisting on only specific, archaic, original meanings then it's you who are causing the communication problem. Some words become more general - and if they didn't they wouldn't survive at all in widespread usage - some become more specific, and some shift meanings altogether. And the stories of how and why they do these things are themselves often really interesting.

 

[benb]

Wow, I've found something I disagree with you on. If you really believe the first paragraph, then your last two, err, make less sense. Meaning and communication is also about context, and unless the person you are listening to or reading is talking in the particular context of Roman military discipline (or some analog of it), then it is likely that they will be using it in the modern sense, which is as a synonym for destroy or annihilate. You can't always apply purely internal etymological logic to words; their meanings interact with the world outside the word. And that does make sense - cultural sense. If you are insisting on only specific, archaic, original meanings then it's you who are causing the communication problem. Some words become more general - and if they didn't they wouldn't survive at all in widespread usage - some become more specific, and some shift meanings altogether. And the stories of how and why they do these things are themselves often really interesting.

I agree with that, and have no problem with the use of decimate in the modern definition.
However, I still sometimes amuse myself by saying "You mean precisely reduce by 10%?" when someone uses it.

Sometimes being a pedant is fun.

 

[swee'pea99]

"You can't always apply purely internal etymological logic to words; their meanings interact with the world outside the word."

Wittgenstein would have said, I think, that it's not so much that you can't always as you shouldn't ever. Words' meaning is not ultimately rooted in their etymological essence but in their use. At the risk of over-simplifying: a word's meaning is the work it does. And that work - that 'meaning' - changes with general usage over time.

Very often the pedant, smugly insisting on what's strictly the case, is in truth holding out for what isn't the truth (whether or not it ever was). Not that it's not fun to do. Or worthless. I will continue to insist that people who say 'a myriad of' are in error, even as the waves of general ignorance rise up to engulf us all. Much good it'll do me...

 

[Ravenbait]

Wow, I've found something I disagree with you on. If you really believe the first paragraph, then your last two, err, make less sense. Meaning and communication is also about context, and unless the person you are listening to or reading is talking in the particular context of Roman military discipline (or some analog of it), then it is likely that they will be using it in the modern sense, which is as a synonym for destroy or annihilate. You can't always apply purely internal etymological logic to words; their meanings interact with the world outside the word. And that does make sense - cultural sense. If you are insisting on only specific, archaic, original meanings then it's you who are causing the communication problem. Some words become more general - and if they didn't they wouldn't survive at all in widespread usage - some become more specific, and some shift meanings altogether. And the stories of how and why they do these things are themselves often really interesting.

It wouldn't be much fun if we agreed on everything, would it?

But I think you are being overly harsh in saying: "it's you who are causing the communication problem". That's like saying to someone who can't walk that he's causing the access problem because everyone else is capable of using the stairs. I'm not a pedant because it pleases me to be so; I'm not a pedant because I think that the dictionary definition is the only one that matters. I don't see a word purely as whatever the colloquially accepted meaning is. I look at a word and see the etymology embedded in the order of letters. Words have shapes, created by their letters and the blocks of which they are made. That shape carries its inherent meaning. I don't know how this works any more than a synaesthetic who can use his cross-wiring to do arithmetic at a glance knows how that works.

I get angry about cinemas only showing films in 3D, as well.

"Decimate" is structured out of a block that has the inherent meaning of "10". I can't ignore that. What I have to do when someone uses it to mean "totally destroy" is translate it, which is irritating when the word has a perfectly good, valid meaning: the removal of 10% of an amount. At one point the Amazonian rainforest was decimated. I think the situation is rather worse than that, now.

I remember critting a piece of writing in which the author had used the word "prostrated" of a man who was dangling helplessly from a monster's mouth. I queried this usage, as it made no sense. He brought up the dictionary definition of "weakened". I tried to explain the way the word is made up and how evocative the word can be when used correctly, and he became quite irate and used the same arguments as are being employed here: the word means what he is choosing it to mean, which isn't far enough from what it actually means to render it invalid. I gave up at that point.

I have, as I've said elsewhere, a writer's love of words. I'm with Pratchett on that. Words are amazing. They carry history around with them. A few letters in a certain order can do so much: a job of work, yes, but to me they work much harder when they are viewed in the context of not just what people use them for but where they come from. Saying that a word is worth only the job of work it does is like saying a finely crafted samurai sword is of no more value than a cheeseknife. Maybe not, if all you you want is to cut cheese. My relationship with words is more ambitious than that.

I find it peculiar that we can complain about "loose" being used for "lose" and no one says we're being overly pedantic, but not about words such as "decimate", "prostrate" or even "nice". One day maybe "loose" will come to mean "lose" just because people didn't bother getting it right for a while and then Wittgenstein will be used to justify that, too. "Peddling" will mean "pedalling". Infer and imply will become interchangeable.

I just hope I'm not around to see it because I find things confusing enough as it is at times.

Sam

 

[JohnHenry]

"so you can shop the entire Debenhams product range from any store"