Pedants' Paradise

[smittims]

I loved the one about the Sun criticising Gordon Brown and then making the same mistake. My only surprise was that they did apologise. Would the Daily Mail?

[oddoneout]

Point taken. But according to Alan Bennett, 'epic' was a favoured word of Lindsay Anderson, who lamented the lack of this quality in England, and especially English art , cinema and theatre. So I suppose the implication is 'a moment worthy of an epic '.

But the truth is probably, as I'm sure you guesssed ,that the person who wrote that doesn't know what 'epic' means. I often hear this, for instance when people say 'cathartic' when they mean 'therapeutic'.

I think that it is used in a reasonably correct way much of the time in the sense of a cleansing/purging of emotions - which is doubtless therapeutic, but in a particular way.
My old Chambers dictionary has "purification of the emotions, as by the drama according to Aristotle", among other definitions.

[french frank]

But the truth is probably, as I'm sure you guesssed, that the person who wrote that doesn't know what 'epic' means.

The updated article in the OED impressively informative. Colloquial (originally and chiefly US) : Particularly impressive or remarkable; excellent, outstanding.

First noted in that way in 1983: "When University of Florida linguistics professor David Pharies asked 350 sophomores for samples of college slang, here's what he found... ‘Killer’ is a compliment, along with ‘mint, awesome, prime, epic, golden, [etc.]’." One might add that 40 years later it is a not uncommon colloquialism in the UK, chiefly among the young.

[smittims]

Do they still say 'wicked' for 'impressive or admirable',

and 'Shut...Up!' for 'well, I am surprised to hear that'?

[french frank]

Do they still say 'wicked' for 'impressive or admirable',

OED say: "Excellent, splendid; remarkable. slang (originally U.S.).". Used in that sense by Scott Fitzgerald in 1920. Haven't heard it in a while. And I'm not convinced it's quite the same as we were hearing a few years back. 'Bad' being a synonym. I think these slang terms are generational: I heard a 50+-year-old describe something as 'wicked': it sounded very … out of place. Haven't heard 'spiffing' for a while either

and 'Shut...Up!' for 'well, I am surprised to hear that'?

No information …

[smittims]

I still say 'By Jove!'

The last time I heard 'spiffing' was in the '90s when someone saw me on the front at Morecambe wearing my Henley blazer. I wore it in Llandudno two weeks ago but all I got was 'can I say how smart you look?'

[Serial_Apologist]

Do they still say 'wicked' for 'impressive or admirable',

and 'Shut...Up!' for 'well, I am surprised to hear that'?

Having a wicked sense of humour has in truth been around for as long as I can remember.

[french frank]

Having a wicked sense of humour has in truth been around for as long as I can remember.

Yes, that's the meaning I would have given it: the OED describes that as meaning .... just a minute <patter patter patter> :

"In weakened or lighter sense (from A. 1), usually more or less jocular: malicious; mischievous, sly."

Not quite the modern use which, like 'bad', is the near opposite of the common meaning.

[gradus]

At last I have come across a reference to the critical writings of Sydney Grew, the chosen name of the originator of this thread. Apparently the real Grew disapproved of composers incorporating folk music melodies into their music: '... folk music's beautiful simplicity would be tortured beyond recognition in the strain of bearing an unwieldy superstructure ...'. I learnt this from Caroline Davis's recently published book 'The Captain's Apprentice'. A great read and strongly recommended. As to Grew's assertion, I think there are many who would still agree with him, but not me.

[smittims]

Another interesting book on that subject was 'Fakesong' : 'the Manufacture of British Folk Song' by Dave Harker, basically a critique of what the author seems to me to see as a middle -class misrepresentation of true folk song. The book was fascinating to me as an example of how strong feelings and faction-fighting can grow within movements originally intended to unite like-minded enthusiasts, another example being the canal-restoration movement.

Eva and Sydney Grew wrote the original Dent Master Musicians book on JS Bach.

[kernelbogey]

While watching series 2 of World on Fire (BBC) - about which I have posted (in the tv thread) - and which is set circa 1941-43, I noticed a rather frequent use (in some episodes) of 'OK' in the dialogue, as in 'Are you OK?' etc. My perhaps frail recollection of colloquial British language in the 1950s is that OK was not then in common, or at least frequent, usage. I wonder whether the writers (there were different ones for each episode) were accurate in including it. My guess is that it did not come into common use here before the mass arrival of US troops c1944. The Wikipedia article, though very interesting, doesn't go into this so I am hoping Frenchie or some other linguistic sleuth may have access to evidence in OED online or elsewhere.

[Serial_Apologist]

While watching series 2 of World on Fire (BBC) - about which I have posted (in the tv thread) - and which is set circa 1941-43, I noticed a rather frequent use (in some episodes) of 'OK' in the dialogue, as in 'Are you OK?' etc. My perhaps frail recollection of colloquial British language in the 1950s is that OK was not then in common, or at least frequent, usage. I wonder whether the writers (there were different ones for each episode) were accurate in including it. My guess is that it did not come into common use here before the mass arrival of US troops c1944. The Wikipedia article, though very interesting, doesn't go into this so I am hoping Frenchie or some other linguistic sleuth may have access to evidence in OED online or elsewhere.

As someone in the same ball park agewise () I seem to recall being mildly admonished for saying "OK" with the advice that it was an Americanism and therefore not welcome, and that one would preferably say "I'm all right thank you", or "I'm well" very well, or simply just all right - certainly not today's almost ubiquitous "I'm good", which to me just sounds stupid. I KNOW I'm good!!!

[oddoneout]

As someone in the same ball park agewise () I seem to recall being mildly admonished for saying "OK" with the advice that it was an Americanism and therefore not welcome, and that one would preferably say "I'm all right thank you", or "I'm well" very well, or simply just all right - certainly not today's almost ubiquitous "I'm good", which to me just sounds stupid. I KNOW I'm good!!!

Glad I'm not the only one who has that take on it!
As for "OK", I remember being told off for using it as a youngster, particularly at school or as a response to a request/requirement to do something, when it was considered border-line insolent.

[smittims]

I find 'OK' very useful. Recently I've come across more and more people in this part of the world who have only a partial grasp of English (I expect this is true of other parts of the UK, but there's been a sudden increase round here). 'OK' seems to be one of the few expressions everyone understands.

I don't think it's regarded as an Americanism any more. There's a letter of Elgar c.1902 where he says ' "on time" as the Yanx say'. Conversely , 'gotten ' is perfectly good English, used by Anthony Trollope among others.

[french frank]

so I am hoping Frenchie or some other linguistic sleuth may have access to evidence in OED online or elsewhere.

American in origin as we all know. But the first relevant quotation is probably:

1922 At first Joe thought the job O.K.
D. H. Lawrence, England my England 101

Just in the last few weeks I've been plagued by a plethora [figurative] of upgraded websites, the OED being just the latest (today) where additional clicks are needed. Not to mention that they've expunged my login details where I only had to click into the library card number window and my number magically appeared. Now I have to scroll down and select my local library and then search for the docx on my desktop for my bits of Useful Information. And when I reach the OED 'head' page for my word I have to click all over the place to find the rest of the information I want.

To say nothing of Facebook having changed the 'business' account pages which I needed to set up the forum news page; and where notifications refer me to the Meta Business Suite and I can find how to boost my posts and reach more advertisers or customers. Well, it's almost half past eight. Time for bed in a moment. I'm feeling very tired .