Sigh, and huzzah!

[pecunium]

The most recent update to the OED has come out.

Me, I am neither a prescriptavist, nor a descriptivist. I am a cranky iconoclast. I know what I like, and why I like it. I suppose, were I to be pressed, I am a precisionist; with a splash of throwback.

This comes, I think, of being a widely read auto-didact. I am aware of strange words, long out of fashion. Add to this a mix of friends who are much the same, and toss in fluency in three other languages, and the mix of things I have strong opinions on (often at odds with mainstream usage) is long.

I am among those who are appalled that the most recent update includes chaise lounge.

But that is just the dictionary looking at what is (because the vast majority, seem to me, to be better able to recognise the proper use of the subject/object declensions of the interogative personal pronoun than to take issue with chaise longue being morphed into lounge [esp. because lounging is what people do in them). I would rather see that be a lounge chair/chaise longue, but there you go.

On the other hand, what warms the cockles of my miserly little heart is this addition.

"prozine: Chiefly science fiction, a professional magazine, as opposed to an amateur fanzine"

My ghetto has made a small piece of the big time.

Comments

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

the most recent update includes chaise lounge.

*collapses in horror, fans self, reaches for vinagrette*

IS NOTHING SACRED?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

No. This is English dearie, the language of which james_nicoll, said, (and dead to rights) The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."

If that means we've twisted a perfectly good loan word, by eggcorn, to something new, well thems the breaks.

But I will stand the barricades, to my dying breath, in a valiant action to save the adverb.

One is doing well, not good, etc..

[cjmr.livejournal.com]

My personal barricade in this is teaching my children when to use 'more' and when to use 'fewer'. I may be overdoing it a bit though, my son corrected his grandmother the other day. "No, Grandmommy, it's fewer noodles, not less noodles! You can count noodles." I'm not sure what I'll do if he starts correcting the grammar of complete strangers...

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

But that's a tricky one.

If someone were to offer me too many noodles/potatoes, etc. I might say, "no thank you, I'd like less of that."

Me, I loathe over, when someone means more than, or for a period of duration; which means saying, over [the course of] 30 years, is OK, but, "he was living in Vancouver for over 30 years," isn't.

TK

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I think it can reasonably be argued that Granny was using "noodles" in the sense of a collective mass, in which case "less" would be appropriate. ;-)

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

But, of course, one _can_ do good -- as in, for example, feeding the hungry with Food, Not Bombs, taking worn-out blankets to an Animal Shelter, or donating money to MoveOn.org. (YMMV)