By: etv13
Surely we all still know what is meant by "queer' in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," or "gay" in "The Gay Divorcee," even if both words also mean something (relatively) new now.
View ArticleBy: Douglas
Pete says: "This sort of thing must happen all the time whenever IT (which tends to use regularised -es plurals) overlaps with more traditional disciplines." On the other hand IT has boxen, vaxen,...
View ArticleBy: J.W. Brewer
I think the excerpted paragraphs were sorta dumb (if anything the linguistic equivalent of early 20th century free-love/vegetarian/socialists were probably more at risk of being enthusiasts for George...
View ArticleBy: Steve F
Richard Bell's comment that ' I can no longer use "queer" or "gay" to mean what they meant when I was a boy and learned those words' is said so often (especially by people who are homophobic, whether...
View ArticleBy: un malpaso
"The trouble with pure descriptivism is that, in its moral outrage…" Moral outrage? Descriptivism? Um.. surely he didn't mean… Do you think he got his prefixes mixed up? Of course, as a descriptivist,...
View ArticleBy: Chris Henrich
To "indicee", "parenthesee", and "verticee" add "processee". The place was a company doing maintenance of software and hardware systems for the Army. At least one of our managers was sold on the idea...
View ArticleBy: Troy S.
No, no, no guys. Broccoli entered English through Italian, not Latin. The singular is therefore broccolo.
View ArticleBy: Skullturf
I agree with some earlier commenters: It's understandable to wish for *some* sort of consensus on syllabuses vs syllabi, even if the person doing the wishing doesn't have a strong preference for one or...
View ArticleBy: leoboiko
> It can also aim for quite the opposite: to try to kill long-standing usage that goes against the particular prescriptivist's internal standard (whether one based on logic, classism, memes acquired...
View ArticleBy: Richard Bell
@Steve F. I don't think Steve intended to compliment me in his comment about my comment, but he does prove my point. I did not know my comment was commonly spoken by homophobes, but then, my...
View ArticleBy: Jerry Friedman
@Skullturf: Then there's a convention much used in Britain: CS Lewis, EG Marshall. It goes without saying that two of those conventions indicate lax morals, laziness, and far worse. By "without saying"...
View ArticleBy: Jeremy Wheeler
Richard Bell, you say: "I did not know my comment ["queer" or "gay"] was commonly spoken by homophobes." Really? Then why, do you think that you "…can no longer use "queer" or "gay" to mean what they...
View ArticleBy: Steve F
@ Richard Bell Just to clarify - I tried to express agnosticism about whether your comment was homophobic or not, and intended neither compliment nor rebuke. I merely wanted to remind people of the...
View ArticleBy: Jason Eisner
@Skullturf and @leoboiko agree that Bottum's desire for consistency in naming is reasonable. It might slightly speed up both our comprehension and our production of language. In the course of writing a...
View Article
