Pedants' Paradise

[smittims]

I think 'baby shower' is part of the Americanisation of English life, along with Halloween merchandise, which seems to have gone over the top this year. , and 'Christmas Eve boxes' which are for parents to silence the impatiience fo children who cannot wait for Christmas Day. And I hope no-one here is a fan of couples 'renewing' (i.e. restating in public) their marriage vows on their silver or golden anniversaries. For me that ranks with putting up your Xmas lights in November or wearing a poppy from October 1st. Do they still do that on BBC1? I haven't dared to look.

[Serial_Apologist]

I have just found out the meaning of "baby shower" - one of those expressions (is it recent?) that comes up occasionally (like, on a TV show), prompting one to go to the latest dictionary.

To be honest, I had assumed it to refer to the "breaking of waters" announcing the immediately impending arrival of said baby!


Oh yes - and twens are not people in their twenties, but twins, to a Glaswegian!

[Pulcinella]

Not only the Grauniad that makes mistakes.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/martin-lewis-smart-metre-cost-b2614173.html

MoneySavingExpert (MSE) founder Martin Lewis has issued a warning over smart metres, adding that “too many don’t work” and “word of mouth is often saying ‘don’t bother’”.

[Serial_Apologist]

For me the troublesome word is 'lost'. Leave it out and it doesn't sound too ambiguous. I think it's there for the same reason that so many TV documentaries have the word 'secrets ' in the title. Theyre not 'secrets', just things not many people know about. The fort wasn't lost; it hadn't been mislaid; it didn't go anywhere. But it sounds more exciting than ' the remains of a fort no-one's bothered with until now'.

Mind you, I'd visit Alice Roberts anytime.

[smittims]

For me the troublesome word is 'lost'. Leave it out and it doesn't sound too ambiguous. I think it's there for the same reason that so many TV documentaries have the word 'secrets ' in the title. Theyre not 'secrets', just things not many people know about. The fort wasn't lost; it hadn't been mislaid; it didn't go anywhere. But it sounds more exciting than ' the remains of a fort no-one's bothered with until now'.

[french frank]

"Alice Roberts visits Hull to see/witness/experience the excavation of one of Henry VIII's lost forts" would be more accurate. However it involves more words to read, and, as everybody knows, time is money.

Fewer words for '"Alice Roberts visits the Hull site of one of Henry VIII's lost forts" .

[Serial_Apologist]

From the local rag's TV listings

So how many forts in Hull did he have?

"Alice Roberts visits Hull to see/witness/experience the excavation of one of Henry VIII's lost forts" would be more accurate. However it involves more words to read, and, as everybody knows, time is money.

[oddoneout]

From the local rag's TV listings

Alice Roberts visits the excavation of one of Henry VIII's lost forts in Hull

So how many forts in Hull did he have?

[LMcD]

Interesting to learn a new meaning for a familiar word - is this an example of language evolution in the pedant world we love? Now that I know and accept the new meaning of 'coconut', why, as I ask myself in some poems, didn't I think of it myself?

The presenter on Lyric FM's tea-time programme this afternoon informed us that the reputation of The Dubliners was unquestionable, which I suppose is good news for people who readily take offence.

[Padraig]

Interesting to learn a new meaning for a familiar word - is this an example of language evolution in the pedant world we love? Now that I know and accept the new meaning of 'coconut', why, as I ask myself in some poems, didn't I think of it myself?

[vinteuil]

"
... I'm afraid that as children we semi-deliberately used to mangle the language when it came to expressing the fact that we were hungry - "I'm famished" soon became "I'm famishing", "I'm ravished", "I'm ravishing" "I'm ravaged", "I'm ravaging" &c. This was in the 1950s - pre me-too, and all quite innocent. I think...

.

[oddoneout]

It's a pity that spellcheck doesn't provide definitions. The age of cut and paste has created a tendency to assume something that's been lifted is correct rather than do a quick check, and near enough seems to be the approach when something sounds similar, regardless of whether it even makes sense.
Today I've come across reference to a ship floundering rather than foundering - would have been better just to say sank, which is what happened. Also using intently instead of densely(perhaps a confusion also with intensely) and, in another article, intently instead of intensively.
Something that has been cropping up recently is replete instead of complete (rather funny in an estate agent's blurb where a master bedroom was described as replete with ensuit [sic]). Another is ravish instead of ravage, which I find rather puzzling as I would have thought that both words are sufficiently well known to realise that there is a difference?

[oddoneout]

One of these is incorrect...

EU failing to enforce illegal fishing rules,

EU is failing to enforce rules on illegal fishing,

Unfortunately it would seem that reading the opening sentence of the article was a step too far for the headline writer.

[french frank]

The main demographic that's getting excited by this tour is middle-aged white men who want to wallow in a bit of nostalgia and relive their youth.

Don't know that R3 has gone a bomb on Oasis anyway, but that age demographic is considered the 'replenisher' group for the elderly perch fallers-off.

[LHC]

I think the media's obsession with the tour is in some cases a sign of their increasingly desperate attempts to attract younger viewers/listeners. It's actually not the tour itself, but its promotion, that is currently the 'big story'.

Oasis were formed in 1991 and their biggest Album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory, was released in 1995. I'm not sure that focusing on a band that was a big thing thirty years ago could really said to be attracting younger viewers and listeners. The main demographic that's getting excited by this tour is middle-aged white men who want to wallow in a bit of nostalgia and relive their youth.

I suspect the reason for lots of journalists getting excited by the chance to see the Gallagher brothers plod through their turgid back catalogue is that many of them fall into the same demographic and listened to Oasis when they were young.