The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #172874   Message #4195071
Posted By: Steve Shaw
07-Jan-24 - 07:48 AM
Thread Name: BS: Language Pet Peeves part II
Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves part II
You could say the same about uninterested/disinterested. I think there's a useful distinction between them but so many people use them interchangeably that we might as well admit that the fight may have been lost (see what I did there...?). Once when I was a form teacher, compiling the class reports from their subject teachers, I sent one back to the PE teacher who had written "This boy is disinterested in sport." The PE teacher refused to change it, and the headmaster, a graduate of Cambridge in English, backed him up!   

I'll never give up on alternate and alternative, though...