Language Nazis Unite!

[graceanne]

Time to bring this thread back to the first page... that Dominant/dominate thing is coming up again.

LOL When I saw someone had posted on this thread recently, I was pretty sure it'd be over those two words again. But at least I know I'm not the only one it bugs.

 

[DVS]

LOL When I saw someone had posted on this thread recently, I was pretty sure it'd be over those two words again. But at least I know I'm not the only one it bugs.

It bugs you? So...
does it dominate your day or is it only dominant in your thoughts?

 

[sunfox]

LOL When I saw someone had posted on this thread recently, I was pretty sure it'd be over those two words again. But at least I know I'm not the only one it bugs.

No, definitely not.

I can't stand that. It sets my teeth on edge. Having two threads with the incorrect word in the title was too much for my fragile control.

 

[AngelicAssassin]

Now it makes sense

Deer Sir,

I waunt to apply for the secritary job what I saw in the paper. I can Type real quik wit one finggar and do sum a counting.

I think I am good on the phone and no I am a pepole person, Pepole really seam to respond to me well.

I´m lookin for a Jobb as a secritary but it musent be to complicaited.

I no my spelling is not to good but find that I Offen can get a job thru my persinalety. My salerery is open so we can discus wat you want to pay me and wat you think that I am werth,

I can start imeditely. Thank you in advanse fore yore anser.

hopifuly Yore best aplicant so farr.


Sinseerly,

Sandee Stickley


PS : Because my resimay is a bit short - below is a pickture of me taken at my last jobb.

 

[AngelicAssassin]

Answer to above applicant

Dear Sandee,

It's OK, honey. We have spell check.

 

[bridgeburner]

I've got another one. The phrase "If worse comes to worst"

I've seen it "if worse comes to worse" and "if worst comes to worst" and less commonly "if worst comes to worse"

There is a logical progression from bad to worse and from worse to worst. One might say "worse to worser", but hardly anyone ever does.


-B

 

[FungiUg]

I've been beating myself up of late for "from whoa to go". I thought about it and realised I had it exactly backwards.

Damn, I'm not perfect.

 

[Seduce]

Lovely.
I am improving my English
Go on please.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

I've been beating myself up of late for "from whoa to go". I thought about it and realised I had it exactly backwards.

Damn, I'm not perfect.

"Backwards" if you were trying to describe from beginning to end (e.g., dawn to dusk), but if you were describing "off" time (e.g., non-work), then "whoa to go" could describe from the end of the workday to the beginning of the next...

But I'm too lazy to go back through the thread and figure out which way you were going.

 

[AngelicAssassin]

I've got another one. The phrase "If worse comes to worst"

Here's the explanation.

: Theodore Bernstein has an entry for a similar phrase ("The Careful Writer," 1965):
: WORST COMES TO WORST
: "He observed that if worse came to worse and France did not finally ratify the treaty arrangement. . . ." Idiom sometimes has a way of flying in the face of logic. Admittedly "worst comes to worst" is not logical; nevertheless it happens to be the idiom, and has been so at least since the days of Thomas Middleton (1570-1627).

: And here's Bernstein on the same subject in another book, "Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins" (1971). He seems to have become more crotchety during the intervening six years.

: WORST
: The phrase "if worst comes to worst" must be wrong, say the superpurists; obviously it should be "if worse comes to worst." And some of them have tried to impose that piece of misguided logic on the idiom. Idiom it has been since the early 1600's. Thomas Middleton wrote, "The worst comes to the worst," in his play "The Phoenix," and in the early 1700's the Motteux translation of Cervantes's "Don Quixote" contained the phrase, "Let the worst come to the worst." The words, therefore, have rather aged credentials and should be allowed to live in peace.

Bernstein may be authenticating a very different phrase. I'd be inclined to read "let the worst come to the worst" as "let terrible fortune happen to terrible people," a very different idea from "worse has come to worst," which might describe how you've been flooded out of your house ... and now snakes are slithering into your rowboat.

The idiom relies on a mindset. You (hazarding a guess) and i (at first) think in literal progressions (the sinking rowboat), otherwise why the hell does the speaker/writer keep flapping the lips, or sharpening the pencil? When reading for entertainment, i can handle Hemmingway and King. When listening to someone, however, i prefer they get to the point unless it resides in humor.

Many have moved on to using "worst/worse case scenario." i think in terms of "most dangerous and most likely courses of action." If i wish to get my point across in no uncertain terms, "the shit has hit the fan."

 

[bridgeburner]

I have some difficulty accepting Bernstein's argument. First, he offers only 3 very specific examples over the course of three hundred years. Certainly there are likely more examples than those three, but such is the case with many common misspellings and misuses of words and phrases. If what I perceive as a misuse were more common than the logical progression of the words, his argument would hold vastly more merit. Second, one of the examples he offers is an English translation of a foreign language which is suspect from its beginning. Having read a number of translated plays in several versions it's quite clear to me that translations are colored by the knowledge and experience of the translators particularly where idioms are concerned. This would consequently bring his examples down to 2 in the course of 300 years.

Looked at from the case of good, better, best, no one would argue that it is common or correct to say "If better comes to better" or "If best comes to best". There doesn't seem to be any confusion or insistence that the difference doesn't matter in the case of increasing levels of goodness. I can only surmise that it's because better and best are significantly different in their spellings and pronunciation whereas worse and worst are nearly identical. People are lazy. I do not approve. I'm getting my switch. I may even have to take off my shoe.

-B

 

[FungiUg]

If you think of it "the worst (event) comes to the worst (people)", it does make sense.

 

[bridgeburner]

Ug,

Yes, it makes sense that way but that's not usually how people mean it. What they generally mean is if things go from the frying pan to the fire. It's a statement about how things could go wrong, not about how the guilty might be suitably punished.

-B

 

[DVS]

Isn't it "worst goes to worst" and not "worst comes to worst"? And, I agree with Bridgeburner that the phrase is intended to mean you think you have experienced the worst, but then something still worse materializes. It's truely a worst case scenario.

 

[AngelicAssassin]

Isn't it "worst goes to worst"

Try a web search on both.

 

[FungiUg]

Yes, it makes sense that way but that's not usually how people mean it.

Oh, I know that. The expression has just never made sense at all to me before, whereas now I can see a way it does.

I use "from bad to worse" personally.

 

[DVS]

Oh, I know that. The expression has just never made sense at all to me before, whereas now I can see a way it does.

I use "from bad to worse" personally.

YEAH, that's the way I've heard it used..."everything goes from bad to worse". Just like my life, in the last five years.

 

[Esclava]

I've got to get back into this thread.

I'm an EA (glorified secretary) and that entire "Letter Application for Employment" went through me like a rail-road spike. It also looked like something written by someone I work with.

Just my two cents on the "worse/worst" issue: The only way it has ever made sense to me is to say "If worse comes to worst, then I'll deal with it when that happens", - meaning if what was bad is now worse and what is worse gets to be as bad as it could possibly get (the worst), then I'll deal with it when that happens.

I don't even like to consider a worse to worst scenario because things like that can be "thought" into existence ... and I don't need any more "bad going to worse" than I've already got.

Esclava

 

[Esclava]

YEAH, that's the way I've heard it used..."everything goes from bad to worse". Just like my life, in the last five years.

Awwwwww, DVS ... That which does not kill you - only makes you stronger!

Esclava

 

[DVS]

Awwwwww, DVS ... That which does not kill you - only makes you stronger!

Esclava

Well, I'm aware of that saying, and I must be pretty fucking strong, then. Murphy and I are old friends.
<---muscle bound banana man.


EDITED to add...
and who says I'm not already dead, just running on fumes?

 

[graceanne]

Awwwwww, DVS ... That which does not kill you - only makes you stronger!

Esclava

If that which does not kill you makes you stronger, then can you choose death? Pretty, pretty please?

 

[snowy ciara]

No you may not gracie, and neither may you, DVS. We'd miss you too much and I'd be forced to lead an expeditionary force to the afterlife to bring you back. I'm afraid I just have nothing to bargain with to get you back.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

This may have been brought up before, but: The abbreviation, etc. It's not "ect." It is the English abbreviation of "et cetera," a Latin phrase meaning, "and the rest." We don't pronounce it "ec tetera," so why would "ect." be the abbreviation?

 

[Sir_Winston54]

No you may not gracie, and neither may you, DVS. We'd miss you too much and I'd be forced to lead an expeditionary force to the afterlife to bring you back. I'm afraid I just have nothing to bargain with to get you back.

How about your snowy white bum?

 

[bridgeburner]

This may have been brought up before, but: The abbreviation, etc. It's not "ect." It is the English abbreviation of "et cetera," a Latin phrase meaning, "and the rest." We don't pronounce it "ec tetera," so why would "ect." be the abbreviation?

I think it comes from the mispronunciation "Eck Seterra" like the mispronunciation eXpresso.


-B