Mind your language

[bluehillside Retd.]

Oh OK.

[Stranger]

I have a page in 'my documents' which is titled 'impersonal synonyms'.
It contains:

Impartial, independent, disinterested, objective, dispassionate, detached, impersonal, indifferent

It is quite annoying sometimes, though, when I want a word that isn't quite]/I] any of those...

Anyone know any more?
Anyone disagree with the ones I have?

I hope this fits in with this new thread, by the way. If not, I will happily delete!!

You could an online thesaurus, for example: impersonal, which lists:

neutral, unbiased, non-partisan, non-discriminatory, unprejudiced, unswayed, objective, detached, disinterested, dispassionate, free from discrimination, without favouritism, with no axe to grind, without fear or favour

fair, just, equitable, balanced, even-handed

aloof, distant, remote, reserved, withdrawn, unemotional, unfeeling, unsentimental, dispassionate, passionless, cold, cool, frigid, unresponsive, indifferent, unconcerned

formal, stiff, rigid, wooden, starchy, stilted, restrained, self-controlled, matter-of-fact, businesslike, clinical

stand-offish

gelid

[Harrowby Hall]

Well, here's a place for it. I'll start - am I alone in wincing at "try and" rather than "try to" (as in, "I'll try and get the answer for you")? 

Go for it!

OK, well, what gets my goat is the inability of too many people to construct grammatical sentences containing "could" and "ought":

"I could of won, he ought to of been disqualified."

This is not necessarily a sign of poor educational achievement - I would be quite well off had I received £1 for every time I came across it when marking undergraduate assignments. I suspect that a combination of ineffective teaching of English grammar and limited reading of fiction for pleasure may be responsible.

[SusanDoris]

Stranger #26

thank you! I'll copy and paste that onto the doc!

HH #27

I wonder if  the phrase 'auxiliary verb' is used and whether it is understood. Perhaps a different phrase is used nowadays?

[Harrowby Hall]

HH #27

I wonder if  the phrase 'auxiliary verb' is used and whether it is understood. Perhaps a different phrase is used nowadays?

Could be. Of course, what people are doing is transcribing what they hear into into script without concerning themselves with grammar.  It's the sort of thing I see in TV subtitles during live programmes.

And another old, old complaint. The presence of an apostrophe means that there has been some kind of elision. Nothing else.

[ekim]

I believe split infinitives are acceptable now ....  'To boldly go where nobody has gone before.'

[Nearly Sane]

I thought the idea that split infinitives were unacceptable was very unclear? It always seemed a very odd rule to me because often a non split infinitive just sounds clunky.

[Stranger]

I thought the idea that split infinitives were unacceptable was very unclear? It always seemed a very odd rule to me because often a non split infinitive just sounds clunky.

It's based on a comparison with Latin (in which, so I'm told, the infinitive is always one word, so cannot be split). The rule is a 19th century invention, with no rational justification.

[Harrowby Hall]

This is my understanding, too.

It reflects the strange belief that infected the grammar school that I attended in the middle of the last century that Latin was the criterion language and set the rules for studying the grammar of all other languages. English grammar had to be distorted so that it would fit inside the constraints of Latin. No one considered, for example, that Latin is a highly inflected, synthetic language while English is a largely uninflected, analytic language.

Mercifully in our now postChomsky era we can recognise that there is nothing special about Latin. If people wish to study dead Mediterranean languages they are free to do so. But they should not believe that this gives them any qualities which will make them uniquely qualified to be world statesmen. 

Boris Johnson  - take note.

[SusanDoris]

I thought the idea that split infinitives were unacceptable was very unclear? It always seemed a very odd rule to me because often a non split infinitive just sounds clunky.

It was some rather stuffy Victorian, whose name escapes me at the moment, who wrote a book of grammar including the idea that a split infinitive was wrong and who was then referred to as an expert.


Posted before reading two subsequent posts.

[jeremyp]

IME this is often courtesy of Apple autocorrect.

It's not autocorrect's fault, you can still read the words and override its decisions.

[bluehillside Retd.]

HH,

This is my understanding, too.

It reflects the strange belief that infected the grammar school that I attended in the middle of the last century that Latin was the criterion language and set the rules for studying the grammar of all other languages. English grammar had to be distorted so that it would fit inside the constraints of Latin. No one considered, for example, that Latin is a highly inflected, synthetic language while English is a largely uninflected, analytic language.

Mercifully in our now postChomsky era we can recognise that there is nothing special about Latin. If people wish to study dead Mediterranean languages they are free to do so. But they should not believe that this gives them any qualities which will make them uniquely qualified to be world statesmen. 

Boris Johnson  - take note.

The problem I find with the split infinitive is that, while I know it's based on false alignment with Latin, I can't be sure that my audience is. Thus if, say, I draft an e-mail I avoid them - not because there's a good grammatical reason to, but rather because I don't want the person reading it to think, "he's a bit thick, so I'll treat the rest of what he has to say accordingly".

First world problems eh?

By the way, I just head someone on the radio talking about "unfilled vacancies" in nursing. What kind of vacancies other than unfilled ones could there be I wonder? 

[SusanDoris]

Ah, yes, and what about the times you hear someone say, 'repeated it again' when it is a repetition of the first time not the second/!

[bluehillside Retd.]

Hi Susan,

Ah, yes, and what about the times you hear someone say, 'repeated it again' when it is a repetition of the first time not the second/!

Or "unrealised potential", "close proximity", "new innovation", "revert back", "comprise of" etc.

My pedantry is such that I even wince at "under the circumstances" rather than "in the circumstances" - you can't be under something and surrounded by it.

I know, I know - I need help     

[SusanDoris]

Hi Susan,

Or "unrealised potential", "close proximity", "new innovation", "revert back", "comprise of" etc.

Agreed, particularly the 'revert back'.

My pedantry is such that I even wince at "under the circumstances" rather than "in the circumstances" - you can't be under something and surrounded by it.

I don't think that one bothers me so much! I'll have to pay attention to see how often I hear it!

I know, I know - I need help     

 

[SusanDoris]

Heard on 'Up All Night' noun plus 'begun' as the verb. This by Dotum Adebayo who is usually good on English usage. I waited for a few minutes to see if he would correct himself, then switched off!

[SteveH]

"Comedic" - unnecessary and annoyingly trendy word. It could be useful if it meant "to do with comedy, but not itself funny", e.g. a serious academic paper on the nature of comedy, but in fact it is simply a synonym for "comic", that wastes a syllable and two letters.
Similarly, "empathy", which has no discernible difference in meaning from "sympathy", but sounds (to me, at any rate) colder. (I am aware of that tiresome youtube video with the patronisingly childish animated animals, so don't bother posting a link; I am unconvinced.)
"Issues", when used as a euphemism for "problems".
"Sociopath" - means the same as "psychopath", but gives the user a fake aura of cleverness (they hope).

[bluehillside Retd.]

Just heard someone on Radio 4 say that his company wanted to "expand into the public sector space".

What I wonder did he think that "space" added to the meaning he was trying to convey? Management speak - yuk!

[Harrowby Hall]

A place for all matters linguistic. Got something interesting about language to say? An oddity, a derivation, a "this really gets my goat" bugbear perhaps?

Is, "Got something interesting about language to say?" a dangling epithet for example?

Well, here's a place for it. I'll start - am I alone in wincing at "try and" rather than "try to" (as in, "I'll try and get the answer for you")? 

Go for it!

One of the things which make me ... err ... disquieted is the transfer of technical terms into everyday language in which the original meaning is totally reversed.

A couple of examples:

Down beat - popular usage - weak, subdued;    technical usage - the first beat in a bar, the strongest beat (indicated by a conductor).

Learning curve - popular usage - steep learning curve something which is difficult to learn;   Technical usage - a graph shown amount of learning (as the dependent variable) against time (as the independent variable). Thus something which is learned easily is learned in a shorter period than something which is learned with difficulty. A "steep learning curve" means quick, easy learning.

[Rhiannon]

It's not autocorrect's fault, you can still read the words and override its decisions.

I rarely bother to read back before posting.

[Shaker]

"Sociopath" - means the same as "psychopath"

Poorly defined terms I'll grant you and regarded by many as pop psychology than properly academic or clinical/forensic psychology but that may not be the case: https://tinyurl.com/ycdzemvt

[Rhiannon]

Poorly defined terms I'll grant you and regarded by many as pop psychology than properly academic or clinical/forensic psychology but that may not be the case: https://tinyurl.com/ycdzemvt

I thought that these days the umbrella term is 'anti social personality disorder'.

[SteveH]

I thought that these days the umbrella term is 'anti social personality disorder'.

'Vicious little scumbag', surely?

[SteveH]

Literally! Its sooooo annoying the way people use that word these days.

That's the way language changes. "Very" and "really" went the same way, from meaning "not metaphorically" to being simple intensifiers, long ago. Chaucer uses "very" a lot, but always means "truly", not just "more than most".

[SteveH]

Hi Susan,

Yes, though he’s pretty much indifferent to the meanings of words. Pedant that I am, what bugs me in particular by the way is not so much when meanings change but when people use words to mean substantially the opposite of their actual meanings (“invariably” when they mean “usually”, “underestimate” when they mean “overestimate” etc).

"Temper" is aword that is changing its meaning to the opposite of its original meaning at the moment. It originally meant, and sometimes still does mean, "patience, slowness to become enraged", when applied to people: it's what you lose when you get angry. However, nowadays you hear people say of some obnoxious thug "he's got a hell of a temper", when temper is obviously what he lacks. "Temper tantrum" is an oxymoron. The original, literal meaning, of course, was a treatment for metal to make it more malleable and less brittle.