Bad English.

[Angelfishsolo]

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

Though you might be interested in the derivation of decimate.

 

[swee'pea99]

I'm not aware that anyone's trying to 'justify' anything, much less saying words are 'only worth' their functional role. Just (in my case), that what they mean is what they do.

There is of course more to words than what they mean. And the history embodied in them is indeed a constant joy. As NZ journo Joe Bennet wrote, re local enthusiasts for English to be made phonetic, thus easing the difficulties of tots struggling with spelling:

'Not only would the simplification of language distance the language from its roots, more importantly still it would sever the people of tomorrow from the wisdom of yesterday'.

Arguing further that the acknowledged vigour and richness of English can be attributed directly to the diversity of its roots (and the histories they embody), from Anglo-Saxon through Latin to Hindi, he points out that: 'Through does not rhyme with though, nor with cough or bough or enough or thorough. I find that delightful.'

Who could find otherwise?

 

[Angelfishsolo]

Through does not rhyme with though, nor with cough or bough or enough or thorough. I find that delightful.' [/i]

Who could find otherwise?

I love that quote

 

[swee'pea99]

I love that quote

Me too!


If you like that kind of wordy whimsy, there's a whole heap of it on my website. For example:

Bishops, buns & gorillas

Observer reader's editor Stephen Pritchard, in a piece on the challenges of creating a style guide 'to promote consistency and accuracy in a paper's use of the language' without 'cramping the writer's style', quoted a reader's plea 'for care when using the term 'only'', which struck me as a great illustration of the importance of getting just the right words in just the right place, to ensure that you say what you mean to say. As opposed to something altogether different. So, with thanks to Robin Keable...

'Only the bishop gave the gorilla the bun.
The only bishop gave the gorilla the bun.
The bishop only gave the gorilla the bun.
The bishop gave only the gorilla the bun.
The bishop gave the only gorilla the bun.
The bishop gave the gorilla only the bun.
The bishop gave the gorilla the only bun.'


Have a bun!

 

[Ravenbait]

Arguing further that the acknowledged vigour and richness of English can be attributed directly to the diversity of its roots (and the histories they embody), from Anglo-Saxon through Latin to Hindi, he points out that: 'Through does not rhyme with though, nor with cough or bough or enough or thorough. I find that delightful.'

Who could find otherwise?

Plenty of people, it would seem, given the regularity with which suggestions are made to simplify the English language to make it "easier", or encouraged to ignore the history of a word in favour of what some use it for currently.

Sam

 

[swee'pea99]

"an emergent property of the word-reader system"? Eh?

Go on - have a bun!

 

[Ravenbait]

does[/i] is convey to the reader the idea that the reader associates with that word. What the word means may be something else entirely.

Sam

 

[Angelfishsolo]

This is the problem I have.

You say that the meaning of the word is what it does. Well, what does a word do? It conveys an idea. So "does" in this sense is the effect of the word on the reader. Now if the reader has a different idea of what the word means, then the effect is different from the one the writer intended.

That's an emergent property. It's not the writer's fault or the reader's fault, according to those who think that a word should mean whatever people use it to mean. It's an emergent property of a system in which the writer and the reader can have different ideas of a word's meaning on a fundamental level. If someone says "the population was decimated by the attack" then I immediately think 10% losses when they could mean the entire place was flattened and everyone killed.

To me the meaning of the word is what is embedded in the word by virtue of history and origin. It is separate from what the word does because what it does is described by the effect it has on the reader. We don't have a word for effective meaning (we only have definition). What the word does is convey to the reader the idea that the reader associates with that word. What the word means may be something else entirely.

Sam

Surely if the word is used in context the meaning becomes clear?

 

[Fnaar]

I'm mostly with swee'pea on this one. Words have original meanings, but sometimes through sheer strength of numbers and usage, that meaning changes and develops, and sometimes a word takes on an idiomatic usage that is somewhat removed from its 'original' meaning. Language is a living and developing thing, it does not remain in the same place. Having said that, the use of 'literally' to mean 'non-literally' (as in "I was literally gutted") gets my goat. (Not literally, as I don't have a goat).

 

[benb]

This thread is making me feel awful.

 

[Ravenbait]

Surely if the word is used in context the meaning becomes clear?

Not necessarily. I've seen plenty of examples where a word has been used in context and was still confusing.

I'm not, by the way, saying everyone else is wrong and I'm right. I have a weird brain, as discussed elsewhere, and my synaesthesia means I have a relationship with words that is not normal. I find it amusing and bemusing, however, that people should say that words mean whatever we take them to mean on a thread about bad English. Perhaps we should have defined what we mean by "bad English" before starting.

Because if it's just a popularity contest, then using "literally" to mean "it really was as extreme as this" as opposed to "this is an accurate description of what actually happened" is a battle already lost, as are most of the other skirmishes in the thread; at which point we're just having a whinge and I'm as entitled to my whinge as the rest of you.

So nyer.

Sam

 

[Angelfishsolo]

Not necessarily. I've seen plenty of examples where a word has been used in context and was still confusing.

I'm not, by the way, saying everyone else is wrong and I'm right. I have a weird brain, as discussed elsewhere, and my synaesthesia means I have a relationship with words that is not normal. I find it amusing and bemusing, however, that people should say that words mean whatever we take them to mean on a thread about bad English. Perhaps we should have defined what we mean by "bad English" before starting.

Because if it's just a popularity contest, then using "literally" to mean "it really was as extreme as this" as opposed to "this is an accurate description of what actually happened" is a battle already lost, as are most of the other skirmishes in the thread; at which point we're just having a whinge and I'm as entitled to my whinge as the rest of you.

So nyer.

Sam

You have an interesting way of looking at things

 

[swee'pea99]

Reading last weekend's Review section over lunch, I came across this, in a review of a recent book:

"Time and again he stops to point out some verbal curio, as in the case of the word 'kit', which used to mean 'bag', so that a 'kit-bag' is literally a 'bag-bag'."

Now I suppose you could argue that strictly, 'kit-bag' means 'bag-bag', and I suppose that in some sense you'd be right. Whether anybody else would think that such an argument was in any sense useful or in any way enlightening would be a whole different question.

My own take on it is to be suspicious when people start putting words like strictly and literally in italics in discussions such as this, and say that as far as I'm concerned, anyone who says 'kit-bag' means 'bag-bag' is a twit. We all know what kit-bag means: it means the bag you put your footie stuff in. Insisting otherwise on historical, etymological or any other grounds is just pissing down your own leg: you get a nice warm feeling, but with any luck no-one else notices, or pays any attention.

None of which means you should give up on 'literally' - that battle has not yet been lost. Misuse of such important words should be punished with ridicule, derision and, if necessary, burning coals. 'Almost unique' and variants thereof is a bugbear of mine, (along with the '110%' beloved of Apprentice contestants) and anyone who uses such terms in my presence will collect a sharp clip round the ear, so long as I draw breath.

Bun, anyone?

 

[Flying_Monkey]

This thread is making me feel awful.

That is a really good example of what I am talking about...

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Does it matter? To me it does. I take pride and pleasure in using words that convey layers of meaning. But if the person reading the words sees no further than the popularly accepted layer (for all I know there are people who read the word "loose" used correctly and are confused by it because they think it means "lose") then my efforts are not just wasted, the word isn't doing the job. It is failing to communicate and thus I, as the user of the word, am failing to communicate.

In the sense that one can say a word means what it does in the sense of "does" being an emergent property of the word-reader system, I agree with you. But words have definitions for a reason, and that reason is so that when we put a word to work we have a reasonable chance of predicting what the effect will be.

Sam, you are not the only writer here. And as someone who writes mainly poetry, on the one hand, and non-fiction, on the other, I am always very much aware of the tension between original meaning and use-meaning in different contexts. English works, and is so useful, precisely because of a tense and irreconcilable balance between the general and the specific, the multpiple and the singular. It's why English poetry has particular qualities that are different from say, Chinese poetry, which tends to the multiple and a singular understanding is almost always impossible.

It is the quality of emergence that supports he argument I am making, and not yours, as Stephen Jay Gould (quoted earlier using decimate in the modern sense) would no doubt agree...

Nyer nyer ner-nyer.