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BS: Language Pet Peeves
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Senoufou Date: 27 Oct 23 - 03:01 AM I expect this has been brought up before on this thread, but I just had to post this:- Husband and I were in a Costa café yesterday having a nice cuppa. At the table next to us were two young women having a natter (rather loudly). What struck me was the incessant repetition of the word 'like'."I was ..like...why?" "So she was ...like...I don't know" etc etc ad nauseam. Wouldn't it be simpler to use the word 'said'? For example, "I said, "I don't know." and so on. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Mrrzy Date: 26 Oct 23 - 10:56 PM Um, no, it doesn't stop being a theory when (might as well be) proven. See relativity, gravity, evolution. All well-established, well-demonstrated, theories. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Doug Chadwick Date: 26 Oct 23 - 07:39 PM Even if B's actions achieved the outcome that A would have hoped for, left to themselves, it would still be interference if A would have preferred to get there by their own efforts. DC |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Doug Chadwick Date: 26 Oct 23 - 07:26 PM If B thinks doing X will help A, and does X anyway without asking, resulting in a positive outcome for A, then it is benevolence. If B thinks doing X will help A, and does X anyway without asking but, in fact, hinders rather helps A then it is interference. DC |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: MaJoC the Filk Date: 26 Oct 23 - 10:13 AM Strictly speaking, this may not belong here,* but it peeves me summat rotten that I don't know the answer:
I open the query to the floor. Have at it, gentlecatters. * And I may well have asked this elsewhere already. I blame bit rot in the wetware. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: MaJoC the Filk Date: 25 Oct 23 - 11:41 AM > You don't "prove" theories. That's not allowed for in the scientific > method. Correct. The word "proof", after all, originally meant "test", as in "degrees proof" of alcohol, and the true meaning of "proof of the pudding", and of "the exception proves the rule". As it happens, I've just been re-reading Simon Singh's Fermat's Last Theorem, in which he points out that the scientific theory is the poor relation of the mathematical theorem. The latter is absolute (admittedly the underlying axioms are accepted as true).* The same is true for proofs. * Shut up at the back there, Gödel. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: MaJoC the Filk Date: 25 Oct 23 - 11:00 AM > Whoopi Goldberg: "I’m an actor – I can play anything." I'd like to see her play the young lad in Equus. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Mrrzy Date: 21 Oct 23 - 10:24 AM Right. You can disprove, or provide support for. The headline had read Judge killed by suspect, but before I could complain, it was changed to Suspect in judge's killing... Someone else was faster. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 20 Oct 23 - 05:21 AM You don't "prove" theories. That's not allowed for in the scientific method. It's all about accumulating evidence to get ever nearer to the truth. Theories are there to explain the phenomena we encounter, but science is humble enough to leave the quest for truth ever-open. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: BobL Date: 20 Oct 23 - 04:30 AM "Correct theory" Call me pedantic, but I would argue that you can have a correct theory. However, it shouldn't be called correct until proven so, at which point it ceases to be a theory. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Thompson Date: 20 Oct 23 - 01:30 AM I've no objection to Americans calling a full stop a period. It's when the word is used as a bullying "And that's what I think, and that's right, so shut up" ending to a statement it makes me laugh. Period. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 19 Oct 23 - 07:33 PM It's not about right or wrong, Bill. It's about irritants... ;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Bill D Date: 19 Oct 23 - 07:29 PM "Full stop" and "period" are just conventions. Neither one is 'right'. I know what either one means, and I HAVE heard "full stop" over here. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Mrrzy Date: 19 Oct 23 - 07:10 PM Right on about the after thing. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 19 Oct 23 - 06:21 PM You can't have a "correct theory." A theory is not a fact or a final conclusion. In its finest form, it's a concept that becomes ever stronger as evidence continues to accumulate, or it's a concept that may cheerfully be blown out of the water by powerful evidence that undermines it. The misuse of the word by non-scientists who are trying to look clever infuriates many a scientist. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. ;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Lighter Date: 19 Oct 23 - 05:53 PM Here's a typical one from my files, from 2009: "We can't be lulled into the fact that all the Al-Qaeda people are flubs....They are expert bombers." From 1968: "We're banking on the fact that Dr. Halvorsen's [crackpot] theory [that we don't believe] is correct." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 19 Oct 23 - 03:29 PM I kinda like (potential pet peeve there) most American English, but "period" for full stop is just bloody silly. It doesn't mean anything, whereas "full stop" means what it says in unequivocal terms. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Thompson Date: 19 Oct 23 - 01:57 PM It's always a bit embarrassing on this side of the Atlantic (where we say "full stop" for the "." at the end of a sentence) when Americans make a strong declarative statement, and end it by saying "Period". Should we be offering Tampax? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 19 Oct 23 - 10:06 AM Point taken, but if it's a fact it's a fact. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Lighter Date: 19 Oct 23 - 07:57 AM Have I mentioned "fact" for "notion, claim, or idea"? I've been hearing it almost daily for decades: "What about the fact that...?" "As for the fact that...." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 19 Oct 23 - 06:16 AM There's a local farmer called Mr Bunkham who shows his prize cows. The caption under his photo in this week's local paper called him Mr Bunkum. :-) (the adjoining article spelled his name correctly several times). The paper is notorious for its amusingly-poor proofreading. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Thompson Date: 19 Oct 23 - 02:58 AM I'm currently flinching every day by the misuse of the word 'after': Woman Killed After Collision Is there a serial killer going around killing helpless car crash victims? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Mrrzy Date: 17 Oct 23 - 09:04 AM No, the data beg to differ. A 3yo has language but not complex rational thought. A 3yo has the Agency fallacy. This is the birth of Faith. You can have language and an earlier form of intelligence. Anyway. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Lighter Date: 17 Oct 23 - 07:45 AM Human intelligence is based on language. You can't have conscious, reflective "faith" or "belief" without language. Therefore both faith and intelligence "evolved" at about the same time. So did inductive logic. ("If such-and-such is true, so-and-so should be true too.") Deductive logic, however, took millennia. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Paul Burke Date: 17 Oct 23 - 06:17 AM "From an evolutionary perspective, faith *preceded* intelligence." Hmm, citation needed. Maybe you mean "developmental point of view". Or maybe faith in the soft sense, as distinct from Faith. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Mrrzy Date: 16 Oct 23 - 03:11 PM From an evolutionary perspective, faith *preceded* intelligence. The Agency fallacy is something 3-year olds go through on their way to developing 5-yo thinking, following the likely development of human intelligence from more primitive (meaning closer to the point of origin) cognitive abilities. People who believe in anythingsupernatural fail to outgrow it, is all. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Bill D Date: 16 Oct 23 - 01:27 PM "It's a word necessitated by their delusion." I totally understand how & why our remote ancestors 'delusion' was necessitated by so many things they could not comprehend. Human minds, once they could reason, however vaguely and wrongly, sought for answers. Lightning, seasons, death, etc... were much easier to relate to by reference to unseen entities, and once prettier and more complex stories about those entities were developed, along with human interpreters, it became 'simpler' to accept the given stories rather than to continue wondering and questioning. (and Today, genuine atheism is pretty rare in societies with authoritarian regimes. In my case, I have turned down a job offer in Texas because I knew I'd eventually say the wrong thing to the wrong people at the wrong time. My habit from childhood was to question strange authoritarian assertions. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: PHJim Date: 16 Oct 23 - 03:59 AM I could care less. Do you want to come with? I blame John Dean for this during the Watergate hearings. "At this point..." or "At this time..." not "At this point in time..." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 13 Oct 23 - 06:56 PM Just a word, just a word, old chap. Words are wot people mean them to be, otherwise language collapses. "Atheist" is no more than a term of convenience, as it's such a hard concept for people of belief to get their heads round. And a lot depends on whoever it was who invented the word. I hate to be characterised by a single word, but, in modern parlance, I'm an atheist and there's no getting away from it. Once again, the "a" in atheist puts me in the negative, which I'm not having. "Atheist" wouldn't even be a word at all were it not for the highly-irrational billions who "believe in God." It's a word necessitated by their delusion. Think about that. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Mrrzy Date: 13 Oct 23 - 05:55 PM Um, sorry, Steve Shaw, the a- root of a-theism does, precisely, mean lack of. Lack of theism. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 13 Oct 23 - 05:32 AM Gosh, Bob, "regulo!" Haven't heard that for yonks. I'm putting it in the "words that should be reintroduced" thread! :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: BobL Date: 13 Oct 23 - 04:02 AM One of my cookbooks contained a reference to a "very moderate" oven, no degrees or regulo number. Is that supposed to be hotter or cooler than just plain "moderate"? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 12 Oct 23 - 01:52 PM "This new seasonal wine range is our biggest yet and …. means shoppers can get fantastic quality wines at accessible price points”. (from a website recommending some Aldi wines) "Accessible price points?" What jargonistic mumbo-jumbo is this? Inexpensive? Cheap enough for the cash-strapped hoi polloi? Bargain basement? Pretentious nonsense! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: leeneia Date: 12 Oct 23 - 12:26 PM Here's a peeve of mine: categorically, as in "I categorically deny that I broke the windows." What is it supposed to mean? I believe the speaker wants to convey "emphatically" or "without a doubt," because how do categories enter into it? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Bill D Date: 11 Oct 23 - 06:29 PM "So "Do you believe in God?" is a pet peeve of mine!" Oh yes! Phrased that way, it assumes a "God" in the very construction. A better question is, "Do you believe in some sort of god or gods?" Either way, I can only shrug and say, "I have no personal experience with any." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Lighter Date: 11 Oct 23 - 05:27 PM No "No, Steve," Steve. Obviously, I would have thought! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 11 Oct 23 - 04:38 PM Whaddya mean, Lighter, " No, Steve?" I haven't waded in on that one! :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Lighter Date: 11 Oct 23 - 04:26 PM Captured by what? Pejoration of "moderate" is a linguistic development explicable by politics. Traditionally the word has had neutral or positive connotations. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Thompson Date: 11 Oct 23 - 04:08 PM Oh dear. Even this thread had been captured. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Lighter Date: 11 Oct 23 - 01:07 PM No, Steve, for the extreme populists of the Republican party (now about 90% of it) "moderation" in the pursuit of their version of liberty is, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, "no virtue." Moderates, in that view, are just fast-talking cowards. Bonus peeve: "cowardly" being used as the preferred synonym for "treacherous" (no matter how daring) and "coward" for "miscreant" or "monster (ditto). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Backwoodsman Date: 11 Oct 23 - 12:24 PM Errrrmmm…Language Pet Peeves???? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: meself Date: 11 Oct 23 - 12:09 PM So whaddya think: is 'very moderate' an error - typo or misusage - or is being 'moderate' as egregious a characteristic as being 'unprincipled' and 'opportunistic' in the modern GOP? Hard to know .... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Lighter Date: 11 Oct 23 - 07:38 AM If you have no principles, avoid moderation: https://tinyurl.com/36b5kev8 "Republican state Rep. Craig Williams has been trying to build internal party support for an undeclared 2024 bid for Pennsylvania attorney general, but he got some unwelcome news when a powerful national party group [the Republican Attorney Generals Association] trashed him as dishonest and 'very moderate, unprincipled and opportunistic.'" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 11 Oct 23 - 05:13 AM You are able to provide rock-solid evidence for your parentage, which no-one can deny. Whatever evidence you think you have for your religious beliefs may be sufficient for you and good luck with that. That's a respectable position. Air that evidence in public when there are a few thinking atheists around and not only would your evidence be in peril of being debunked but it would also likely be shown to not be evidence in the strict sense at all. Best to keep your belief private. I've been saying just that to folks of a religious persuasion for decades. ;-) So your parentage need not be stated as a belief at all. Morrisons are currently selling a highly rated Spanish red wine. Do you believe me? Well here's the wine with their logo on the label and here's the receipt I got for it this morning, and you can find its high score, the sum of thousands of customer reviews, on Vivino. You don't have to believe me. In fact, I'd rather you didn't say that you do! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: BobL Date: 11 Oct 23 - 04:07 AM If you assert that you believe in something you're absolving yourself from being challenged for evidence. Not at all, Steve. For example, I believe I truly am the natural-born son of the married couple by whom I was raised and whom I regarded as my parents. If necessary I could refer to my birth certificate in support of this belief, and would not object to a DNA test. The evidence behind my religious beliefs is circumstantial and subjective, but it exists. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 10 Oct 23 - 08:09 PM "Does it matter?" legitimises the question. Not only that (another peeve coming up...), the word "believe" is grossly overused. If you assert that you believe in something you're absolving yourself from being challenged for evidence. Especially if God is involved. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Doug Chadwick Date: 10 Oct 23 - 07:32 PM .... simple refusal to think about it all. To my mind, the most appropriate response to "Do you believe in God?" would be "Does it matter?". No matter how strong a mere mortal's belief may be, either for or against, it would have no bearing on the existence or non-existence of a supernatural being. I don't know if it's a real word, but I describe myself as an apothet - it makes no difference one way or the other. I try to live my life as a polite, caring, socially aware and responsible citizen, not because I fear eternal damnation, but because it's the way I choose to live. DC |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 10 Oct 23 - 06:04 PM Well I've seen cod-atheists asserting that God is impossible. Real atheists never say things like that. I think I know that there's no Loch Ness monster. Of that I'm pretty certain (did you notice the two caveats there?) Even Richard Dawkins says that he can't be absolutely sure that there's no God (as defined by the major religions). If you ask me if I believe in God and I answer no, you've hoodwinked me into allowing the conversation to move firmly on to your territory, and I'm not having it. The best answer is that you're asking me an illegitimate question. So "Do you believe in God?" is a pet peeve of mine! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Bill D Date: 10 Oct 23 - 04:59 PM Well, we philosophers will always point out differences between atheism, 'faith based' assertions of the impossibilities of 'gods', militant agnosticism and simple refusal to think about it all. A long thread on 'creationism' awhile back added another idea to the burbling pot... and now a few cosmologists want to re-introduce the idea that our 'reality' is merely a projection from another realm of being! (One more level above quarks and Higgs bosons, electrons and positrons, atoms, molecules, animal, vegetable and mineral, consciousness...etc...) There is a tendency to assume that if there is a noun, it must refer to 'something'. Bah! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 10 Oct 23 - 03:59 PM Atheism is neither of those things. It's not an absence of anything (why should I be defined in the negative?), neither is it faith-based. It's a sort of shrug of the shoulders in the face of irrational affirmations. |
