Semantics

[Ferretfancy]

Percy Grainger used awful neologisms like "Louden lots " meaning crescendo, and other cringe making inventions, rather shame making isn't it ?

[salymap]

Morning Ferret, When at the music library with access to Grainger scores, we youngsters rather enjoyed his Louden lots, Play Trippingly and so forth. I suppose he was being a straight talking Aussie.

[PatrickOD]

Just caught up again with this thread - most enjoyable reading! I must say I LIKE 'towaway', 'eggy-lifty thing' (and 'forgetty-guessy' is a gem), and 'preloved', in their respective contexts. 'Snuck' as the past tense of 'sneak' is a lovely word, and I'm glad to meet it here - I thought my wife had invented it. But to add to DISLIKES I have two current ones - 'party', used as a verb, and the ugliest word I've come across for a long time - 'Podcast'.

[Quarky]

Working on a day to day basis with brillant Ph. D. engineers from all over the world, I am often amused by their lack of knowledge of basic English. Because they have to reach such a high pinnacle of knowledge in their chosen subject, I assume that the only way to do this is to neglect all "peripheral" subjects. This trend can only increase.
One malapropism I spotted the other day was "in mass" - --en masse-- !

[Panjandrum]

Working on a day to day basis with brillant Ph. D. engineers from all over the world, I am often amused by their lack of knowledge of basic English. Because they have to reach such a high pinnacle of knowledge in their chosen subject, I assume that the only way to do this is to neglect all "peripheral" subjects. This trend can only increase.
One malapropism I spotted the other day was "in mass" - --en masse-- !

I'll see you with variants of those: I've been subjected to "On route" and " On mass".

I will raise you with the following: I was the recipient the other day of a communique in which the correspondent referred to an issue as a feta compli. Just for a moment I was bewildered as to how a bland Greek cheese had entered the correspondence...

[Tapiola]

the ugliest word I've come across for a long time - 'Podcast'.

Patrick, you have reminded me of another horror I came across recently: webinar [an online seminar]

[Pabmusic]

Morning Ferret, When at the music library with access to Grainger scores, we youngsters rather enjoyed his Louden lots, Play Trippingly and so forth. I suppose he was being a straight talking Aussie.

Not quite. Grainger was using 'blue-eyed English' - a form that he thought was Anglo-Saxon, purged of French or other Latinate words. It seems very sinister to us now (of course!) but Grainger understood and sympathised with those who saw 'Nordic' types as being different from other 'races' - certainly 'different', if not actually 'superior'. There's nothing I know of to suggest he was actually a Nazi sympathiser, but he had an interest in eugenics and the philosophy behind - say - apartheid. The ballet The Warriors celebrates the differences between cultures, with an implication that they should not mix and thus water down those differences.

[kernelbogey]

Just caught up again with this thread - most enjoyable reading! [...]

This thread is a boondoggle.

[Pabmusic]

Percy Grainger used awful neologisms like "Louden lots " meaning crescendo, and other cringe making inventions, rather shame making isn't it ?

I don't know, though. They're very quaint, but are they really so different from Wagner's or Strauss's German instructions (or indeed anything that's not Italian)? 'Langsam und feierlich' or 'sehr zart und ausdrucksvoll' seem acceptable, surely?

[gradus]

Overages and Underages - only heard by me in the US but possibly in use over here, although I hope not. I think it meant variance above and below the average.

[Serial_Apologist]

Overages and Underages - only heard by me in the US but possibly in use over here, although I hope not. I think it meant variance above and below the average.

Nothing to do with the 9 o'clock watershed, then?

[Ferretfancy]

There's a lovely one in one of the Woody Allen movies, I don't remember which one, in which Alan Alda's character, speaking of a colleague, says " regular guy! Gives good meeting"

[mercia]

seen on a placard today "HAND'S OFF MY PENSION" - hopefully not an English teacher

[Stillhomewardbound]

Heard on a talk at the recent Freethinking Festival ... "One example is, for example ... ". It was an academic. Aside from the tautology, where's the grace in those words.

Our culture now places virtually no emphasis on the virtue of eloquent speech.

[kernelbogey]

I recently saw an AA van on the motorway with the words 'Battery Assist' on the door. I wondered why they used the verb in this phrase - perhaps just shorter than 'Assistance', easier to fit in the space and perhaps thought easier to read when passing at speed. But it reminded me of the phrase 'new build' which has become ubiquitous: I suppose it does convey something different from 'new building' but I find it ugly.