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BS: Language Pet Peeves
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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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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 - 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: BobL Date: 27 Oct 23 - 04:24 AM If B thinks doing X will help A, then discusses it with A before doing it, this is, I suggest, co-operation. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 27 Oct 23 - 05:43 AM It might amaze you to hear that I'm fine with "like." It's in the same linguistic family as "well," "know what I mean?" "so..." and "er..." (eh bien? alors??). Such things have a time-honoured home in spoken language, though not in writing I think. They enable the speaker to lubricate their sentences without resorting to awkward pauses while they collect their thoughts. I've corrected and adjusted several things so far in this typed message as I've gone along that you don't see, because all you're getting is the finished product. You can't do that in speech when you're thinking on your feet. Know what I'm sayin'? :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Lighter Date: 27 Oct 23 - 12:52 PM I first met "to be like" = "to think or say" in NYC in 1984. (Part of my job was to notice such things.) It isn't the "like" that Steve is thinking of: not a pause but part of a novel verb phrase. Compare: "I was, like, really surprised. Like, what do you think?" (= pause or "well.") "I was like 'Want to eat?' and she was like 'OK.'" (= "said.") Don't care for it myself, but that's life. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Steve Shaw Date: 27 Oct 23 - 01:21 PM It may not be real life, but it's life like (see what I did there?) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Mrrzy Date: 28 Oct 23 - 10:17 AM I catch myself saying was, like, instead of said. Awful. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Bill D Date: 24 Sep 23 - 04:39 PM Anyone who says "small little" Why not "teensy tiny miniscule small little"? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Bill D Date: 24 Sep 23 - 06:07 PM Um.. a "teensy tiny minuscule small little" mistake." Now, should I add commas? ;>) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Bill D Date: 08 Oct 23 - 10:02 AM My spellchecker just follows me around and beeps at me. It can be added to or corrected to MY choices. It recognizes both advise and advice, so I can use either...depending on context. https://tinyspell.com/ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Bill D Date: 08 Oct 23 - 03:22 PM I just watched a YouTube thing where some guy was telling about a man who suffered ridicule when you was young... he was reading from some script, and he pronounced it re-DIC-you-el!| |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Bill D Date: 08 Oct 23 - 03:55 PM Ha! I yell at them every chance I get...And I remember a Brit news guy talking about Nic-uh-RAG-you-uh. And everyone in Australia pronouncing 'pain' and 'pine' the same way. No wonder the English language bewilders foreigners. |
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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: 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: 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: 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: gillymor Date: 06 Oct 23 - 08:40 AM Trump as Speaker would be like pouring gasoline on an already blazing dumpster fire. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Mrrzy Date: 28 Aug 23 - 08:36 AM A headline read something like DC fails to house 98% of homeless... Um, aren't 100% of homeless people homeless? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves From: Mrrzy Date: 04 Sep 23 - 06:25 PM I figured out why I don't like "I appreciate you" when expecting Thank you. You appreciate * what* I did, but you thank *me* ... It is ungrammatical and robs me of my due of gratitude, while lowering me to the level of the inanimate hand I gave you. |
