Pedants' Paradise

[Flosshilde]

You can hoover with a Dyson, but you can't google with Yahoo, can you?

I'm sure that you can only hoover with a Hoover. If you have a Dyson you are vacuuming, or vacuum cleaning..

[amateur51]

I'm sure that you can only hoover with a Hoover. If you have a Dyson you are vacuuming, or vacuum cleaning..

They do say that if you have a Dyson, you're a sucker

[MrGongGong]

The sound you can hear is Lord Baden-Powell rotating in his grave

I found his volume "Scouting For Boys" a marked disappointment, but I guess that's just me ...

Is that the bit about "sucking a pebble" ?

[french frank]

I'm sure that you can only hoover with a Hoover. If you have a Dyson you are vacuuming, or vacuum cleaning..

But the verb 'to hoover' has passed into common speech:

1970 Times 2 Nov. 9/7 The populace...sit hoovering up the drivel poured out on television at peak viewing times.

Also:

1971 Engineer 11 Nov. 66/3 How many housewives Hoover the carpet with an Electrolux?

[Flosshilde]

1970 Times 2 Nov. 9/7 The populace...sit hoovering up the drivel poured out on television at peak viewing times.

So much for the 'good old days'

[Lateralthinking1]

'Torpedo' was (originally) the electric ray fish Torpedo nobiliana*, which had the ability to destroy its prey by paralysing them with an electric shock. Wiki tells us : "The naval weapon known as the torpedo was named after this genus, whose own name is derived from the Latin word meaning "numb" or "paralysed", presumably the sensation one would feel after experiencing the ray's electric shock."

In Balzac's Comédie Humaine, Esther van Gobseck has the nickname 'la torpille' because of her ability to paralyse and ruin her 'clients' ; modern translators of Balzac into English are wary of calling her 'the torpedo' because we now more associate that with the high-speed underwater missile; quite the wrong connotation....

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedinidae

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_torpedo

Thank you for that vinteuil. Interesting detail.

[Flay]

From the BBC Proms 55 website:

First staged a month after VE Day, Britten’s searing psychological drama set in a claustrophobic Suffolk fishing community was the critical and popular success that effectively established a new kind of English operatic tradition.

How can you establish a tradition?

[Bryn]

From the BBC Proms 55 website:



How can you establish a tradition?

Not sure, but:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=%22established+tradition%22&oq=%22established+tradition%22&aq=f&aqi=g-K3g-mK1g-bK4&aql=&gs_l=hp.3..0i30l3j0i5i30j0i8i30l4.1587.8461.0.19503.23.23.0.0.0.0.400.2551.15j7j4-1.23.0...0.0.zXkqpz-0O0E

[Richard Tarleton]

Verbs as nouns - forgive me if this has come up before, but I hear it a lot at work and it was used on the Today programme today in relation to the NHS - "ask" as noun, as in "that's a big ask".

[Pianorak]

C M von Weber's op. 65 will now be known as "Invite to the Dance".

[gurnemanz]

Verbs as nouns - forgive me if this has come up before, but I hear it a lot at work and it was used on the Today programme today in relation to the NHS - "ask" as noun, as in "that's a big ask".

I don't very much like "new build", but forming nouns from verbs is surely a perfectly normal linguistic development. Walk, swim, shout, cure, ride - off the top of my head. There must be thousands. They may seem tiresome when newly coined but if they prove to be useful they will probably become established and not be noticed any more.

[kernelbogey]

How can you establish a tradition?

Well a tradition has to begin somewhere. For example, the traditional Navy toast 'Nelson's blood' clearly started after Nelson's death. [I'm reading Barry Unsworth's Losing Nelson at the moment - need to explain my uncharacteristic example.]

The BBC's wording looks sloppy but they seem to be saying that Britten's work began a new chapter/phase/style (et al) in British opera.

It depends from which end you look at a tradition. No one knows they are starting one, but when it's continued for a long time we can call it a tradition.

IMHO.

[Flay]

Not sure, but:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=%22established+tradition%22&oq=%22established+tradition%22&aq=f&aqi=g-K3g-mK1g-bK4&aql=&gs_l=hp.3..0i30l3j0i5i30j0i8i30l4.1587.8461.0.19503.23.23.0.0.0.0.400.2551.15j7j4-1.23.0...0.0.zXkqpz-0O0E

The BBC's wording looks sloppy but they seem to be saying that Britten's work began a new chapter/phase/style (et al) in British opera.

It depends from which end you look at a tradition. No one knows they are starting one, but when it's continued for a long time we can call it a tradition.

IMHO.

You're just being pedantic now!

[MrGongGong]

From the BBC Proms 55 website:



How can you establish a tradition?

I'd ask the "Windsors" they seem to be able to create them and have people believe that things have always been like that

[kernelbogey]

You're just being pedantic now!

I was warned that paradise was an illusion: should have known better.