Pedants' Paradise

[french frank]

When the volume gets too high I tell the Year 5 kids to pipe down!
I'd just about be happy with 'amount' instead, but what's wrong with 'number'?

I think of an amount - and a number - as being static: volume (of rainwater, sound &c) as increasing and decreasing. So to me, 'volume of children' here vaguely conveys 'an increasing number', or could be decreasing depending on context. ?????? 'Numbers' in the plural could go up or down, I suppose. Or perhaps just up? the sort of case one might change one's mind about.

[cloughie]

Americans always seem to refer to Montrow whenever mentioning the jazz festival. To rhyme with "burrow", but not "Moss Cow"!

Like Montro(se). Sky Arts on Saturday night showed Nina Simone’s 1976 concert from that very place!

[Old Grumpy]

From a school governor in a letter in today's Times.




I'd just about be happy with 'amount' instead, but what's wrong with 'number'?

This is a school governor speaking...


...perhaps children are just a commodity

[LMcD]

Talking of which, am I unreasonable to have been appalled that a person whose profession concerns lexicography and languages (the guest on Private Passions today) should have pronounced ‘Montreux’ Mon trou ?

She must dig herself out of it.

[oliver sudden]

Talking of which, am I unreasonable to have been appalled that a person whose profession concerns lexicography and languages (the guest on Private Passions today) should have pronounced ‘Montreux’ Mon trou ?

Any excuse for this…

https://youtu.be/Or66XEGPgbE?feature=shared

[Pulcinella]

From a school governor in a letter in today's Times.

We should also look objectively at the volume of children who are not toilet trained before starting school, poor attendance, rising levels of child tooth extraction, hunger, obesity, mental health problems, violence, knife crime and safeguarding, to name but a few challenges. These are real-world scenarios that schools have responded to out of necessity, in part because of gaps in parenting.

When the volume gets too high I tell the Year 5 kids to pipe down!
I'd just about be happy with 'amount' instead, but what's wrong with 'number'?

[Serial_Apologist]

Talking of which, am I unreasonable to have been appalled that a person whose profession concerns lexicography and languages (the guest on Private Passions today) should have pronounced ‘Montreux’ Mon trou ?

Americans always seem to refer to Montrow whenever mentioning the jazz festival. To rhyme with "burrow", but not "Moss Cow"!

[Sir Velo]

Talking of which, am I unreasonable to have been appalled that a person whose profession concerns lexicography and languages (the guest on Private Passions today) should have pronounced ‘Montreux’ Mon trou ?

Mon dieu!

[vinteuil]

Talking of which, am I unreasonable to have been appalled that a person whose profession concerns lexicography and languages (the guest on Private Passions today) should have pronounced ‘Montreux’ Mon trou ?

... ah, cobber - the sheila's Strine



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[Nick Armstrong]

serial : I think ff's # 6793 was meant as a nudge to test your assertion in your # 6792 that the word was appall.

My # 6796 showed that there is room for appall and appal

Talking of which, am I unreasonable to have been appalled that a person whose profession concerns lexicography and languages (the guest on Private Passions today) should have pronounced ‘Montreux’ Mon trou ?

[vinteuil]

No: enthral/enthralled; rival/rivalled; travel/travelled as opposed to the American, traveled, etc. It's the simple doubling of the consonant applied with add-ons to verb endings that we learned at school in the 1950s ...

... ah yes, the doubling of consonants with suffixes : I remember it well.
With the stumbling-block exceptions -

appealing, paralleled, travailed

[french frank]

And thinking about the verb to enthral, I thought it must be connected with in thrall and thraldom (in US also thralldom). Yes, Bosworth-Toller says þrǽl is a slave or servant. The verb to enthral has therefore undergone a weakening of meaning, akin to captivated..

[french frank]

No: enthral/enthralled; rival/rivalled; travel/travelled as opposed to the American, traveled, etc. It's the simple doubling of the consonant applied with add-ons to verb endings that we learned at school in the 1950s and 50s: we've often discussed it here as fast disappearing.

As vinteuil has pointed out, I was giving examples that didn't work! US travel/traveled demonstrates a certain orneriness (or divergent historical development). I limited my examples to verbs ending in -al rather than -el as the verb we were discussing was appal(l).

[Serial_Apologist]

serial : I think ff's # 6793 was meant as a nudge to test your assertion in your # 6792 that the word was appall.

My # 6796 showed that there is room for appall and appal



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Thanks for correcting me vints.

[vinteuil]

Including ‘pall’, I would surmise?

... more than probably. I only have access to an early (1933) OED : I'm sure French Frank will have access to a more current one, and the etymology may by now have been worked out more fully. But pale, pall, appal(l) are all linked, not necessarily in obvious ways...

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