Pedants' Paradise

[vinteuil]

... Waiters wait, rather than waiter.

... indeed - 'They also serve who only stand and wait'


.

[kernelbogey]

There seems something vaguely tautologous about 'waitering staff'. Waiters wait, rather than waiter.

Though the longer your wait, the waiterer you become.

(I'll get my apron.)

[Bryn]

... indeed - 'They also serve who only stand and wait'


.

The ambiguity of "waiting staff" laid bare on the table.

[gurnemanz]

Thinking about it, "waiter" is not really a very good description of the job nowadays. They tend to be run off their feet. Better word needed. I like the German "Kellner", even if they don't spend so much time going to the cellar.

A Lady-in-Waiting still seems to have a role to play in certain circles - better job than Groom of the Stool.

[french frank]

The ambiguity of "waiting staff" laid bare on the table.

The ambiguity is, I think, dispelled once it becomes a set expression. I did find I'd written some years back about a holiday in Lisbon: "I spotted the waiter from the Cafe Suiça waiting on the metro platform."

[kernelbogey]

I have occasionally come across 'prodigal son' used where there was no prodigality, only a prolonged absence. I wondered if OED (for example) recognises a change of meaning. (I no longer have access to OED online as my local authority has stopped subscribing .)

Merriam Webster gives 'one who has returned after an absence' as a second meaning for prodigal (n.).

Collins glosses the adjective You can describe someone as a prodigal son or daughter if they leave their family or friends, often after a period of behaving badly, and then return at a later time as a better person.

An interesting change in meaning through 'misusage' (suggesting that what is memorable about the biblical parable is the return from absence rather than the prodigality per se).

[french frank]

And, wouldn't you know?, Jane Austen seems to have been first in coining the expression 'prodigal daughter'. Other variants available.

Yes, the Biblical meaning referred solely to the fact that he'd blown his complete inheritance (prodigo = to squander), not that he then crawled back home to Dad, duly repentant.

I have occasionally come across 'prodigal son' used where there was no prodigality, only a prolonged absence. I wondered if OED (for example) recognises a change of meaning. (I no longer have access to OED online as my local authority has stopped subscribing .)

Merriam Webster gives 'one who has returned after an absence' as a second meaning for prodigal (n.).

Collins glosses the adjective You can describe someone as a prodigal son or daughter if they leave their family or friends, often after a period of behaving badly, and then return at a later time as a better person.

An interesting change in meaning through 'misusage'.

[gurnemanz]

I have occasionally come across 'prodigal son' used where there was no prodigality, only a prolonged absence. I wondered if OED (for example) recognises a change of meaning. (I no longer have access to OED online as my local authority has stopped subscribing .)

Merriam Webster gives 'one who has returned after an absence' as a second meaning for prodigal (n.).

Collins glosses the adjective You can describe someone as a prodigal son or daughter if they leave their family or friends, often after a period of behaving badly, and then return at a later time as a better person.

An interesting change in meaning through 'misusage' (suggesting that what is memorable about the biblical parable is the return from absence rather than the prodigality per se).

The Wild Rover in the Irish song came to mind as a true prodigal:

I've been a wild rover for many's a year,
And I've spent all my money on whiskey and beer
And now I'm returning with gold in great store,
And I never will play the wild rover no more
...
I'll go home to my parents, confess what I've done,
And I'll ask them to pardon their prodigal son
And when they have kissed me as oft-times before,
I never will play the wild rover no more

If fellow message boarders were in my presence I might burst into song at this point, so be lucky that cyberspace is in the way.
Pogues

[kernelbogey]

And I've spent all my money on whiskey and beer
And now I'm returning with gold in great store,

Bit of a contradiction in there! (Or perhaps it's 'liquid gold'?)
(I'm happy to imagine you in song, Gurnie!)

[Serial_Apologist]

OK it seems like a productive day for pedantry, so Ill add this one:

PERFORMATIVE

It seems to have been used in connection with Taking the Knee, which is where I first noticed it - using "performative" as a negative term, but it just seems to be a term for doing something "woke"? Surely anything's performative inasmuch as it is being performed? I'm now doing something "performative"!

[vinteuil]

OK it seems like a productive day for pedantry, so I'll add this one:

Performative

It seems to have been used in connection with Taking the Knee, which is where I first noticed it - using "performative" as a negative term, but it just seems to be a term for doing something "woke"? Surely anything's performative inasmuch as it is being performed? I'm now doing something "performative"!

... it's a quite specific technical term ('performative' as opposed to 'constative') (at least originally) -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity

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[Serial_Apologist]

... it's a quite specific technical term ('performative' as opposed to 'constative') (at least originally) -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity

.

Thanks vints. So! It should be a word in my vocabulary!

[oddoneout]

... it's a quite specific technical term ('performative' as opposed to 'constative') (at least originally) -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity

.

Apologies for lowering the tone but seeing those two words together brought this to mind, from the local rag a couple of days ago.

Local councils are set to save thousand of pounds on public toilets after a bill to get rid of business rate charges on them was passed....

[Mr Wilkinson] thanked South West Norfolk MP Liz Truss for her dialogue with the Treasury, saying the MP kept the motion going.

[french frank]

Just had a newsletter which contains the phrase, "a real tragedy for those whose lives are decimated by it". We're used to decimated meaning 'a large proportion of', even 'annihilated' (not a large proportion but all of them). The OED has already caught up with that** and I'm reconciled to the use (though when I read 'the population was decimated to one quarter of its size" it makes me laugh , rather heartlessly in this case ). All the examples given by the OED seem to at least imply bodies or a collection of objects which can be reduced in number. But can one life be decimated? Answer: It can now.


** This use has sometimes been criticized on etymological grounds (see, for example, M. West & P. F. Kimber Deskbk. Correct Eng. (1957) 119 and quot. 1944), but is now the most usual sense in standard English.

[kernelbogey]

Just had a newsletter which contains the phrase, "a real tragedy for those whose lives are decimated by it". We're used to decimated meaning 'a large proportion of', even 'annihilated' (not a large proportion but all of them). The OED has already caught up with that** and I'm reconciled to the use (though when I read 'the population was decimated to one quarter of its size" it makes me laugh , rather heartlessly in this case ). All the examples given by the OED seem to at least imply bodies or a collection of objects which can be reduced in number. But can one life be decimated? Answer: It can now.

I suppose one could write 'literally decimated'... but of course that would make it worse, no?

Edit:
(E.g. the Hampshire side was literally decimated just before tea when Bloggs retired injured.)