Pedants' Paradise

[Thropplenoggin]

I tend to follow the house style of the Oxford University Press in preferring the -ize ending, for the reasons set out by Fowler and in Hart's Rules.

Re the awful Mr Gwynne, I liked AA Gill's take : "Mr Gwynne rhapsodised that, in his day, everyone of whatever class all had perfect grammar and perfect manners. They are, apparently, synonymous. The point of all this is, well, is that there is no point to all this: grammar wardens are playing culturally insecure middle-class Scrabble, they are the intellectual wing of UKIP. Declaiming on grammar is dropping Pooh sticks into a rill that feeds a burn that runs into a stream that disappears into the torrent of the English language. Nobody can dam or alter its path or direct its destination, it belongs to whoever finds it in their mouth. It washes away dictionaries and lexicons and laws and fun-licking grammars. It is global and as free as breathing, and the only truly democratic thing we all own. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that it’s more theirs than yours because they don’t dangle participles."

You're not AA Gill's agent, are you, Vinteuil? The real give-away will be when you start puffing his books, I s'pose.

[jean]

I've always loathed A A Gill, but I think I may be about to change my mind...

[Beef Oven]

I hope this is the correct thread for my query. It concerns the word 'plethora'.

Years ago, my English master told us that a common mistake with this word is to precede it with 'a'. This made sense to me, after all, we wouldn't say 'an anathema'.

I rarely come across the word, but while watching the Panorama 'Cash For Questions' special last night, a document was focused on and read out and it contained "........a plethora of.....".

Was my English master wrong? Did I misunderstand him?

Is anyone up on this sort of thing, and can give a steer? It's actually beginning to affect my sleep.

[jean]

In its original, medical sense of an excessive volume of blood...or excessive fullness of blood vessels (OED) you find it without 'a':

1575 J. Banister Needefull Treat. Chyrurg. f. 25, In curing these kyndes of Ulcers, the causes must first be diligently searched, to witte whether it be Plethora, Cacochymia, or Cachexia.

But the very next citation is

1659 W. Chamberlayne Pharonnida i. i. 15 Flowd to a dangerous Plethora, or where Some Cause occult the Humours did prepare For that malignant Ill.

All the OED's more general modern examples have a or the, so I think your English master was wrong. Or you misunderstood him.

[mercia]

I've always thought anathema a strange word. What is it ? a noun? an adjective ? my online thesaurus gives hate as a synonym whereas I would have thought it was hateful

[Sydney Grew]

I believe he was; the O.E.D. has it singular: a piece of mediæval Latin "plethora," which in turn comes from the Greek plethore (fullness, repletion).

Marryat wrote in 1835: "We are suffering under a plethora of capital."

and in 1868 Farrar complained about "A plethora of words."

It is certainly not unknown for an English master to err. I still remember my own (when I was only about eight) telling us that "gaol" and "goal" were spelled the same way. When I piped up and contradicted him he flew into a fury and administered "the strap" to me in front of the class - terrifying at that age. My father subsequently accused him of being a communist.

[Bryn]

In its original, medical sense of an excessive volume of blood...or excessive fullness of blood vessels (OED) you find it without 'a':

1575 J. Banister Needefull Treat. Chyrurg. f. 25, In curing these kyndes of Ulcers, the causes must first be diligently searched, to witte whether it be Plethora, Cacochymia, or Cachexia.

But the very next citation is

1659 W. Chamberlayne Pharonnida i. i. 15 Flowd to a dangerous Plethora, or where Some Cause occult the Humours did prepare For that malignant Ill.

All the OED's more general modern examples have a or the, so I think your English master was wrong. Or you misunderstood him.

Indeed.

[Beef Oven]

I believe he was; the O.E.D. has it singular: a piece of mediæval Latin "plethora," which in turn comes from the Greek plethore (fullness, repletion).

Marryat wrote in 1835: "We are suffering under a plethora of capital."

and in 1868 Farrar complained about "A plethora of words."

It is certainly not unknown for an English master to err. I still remember my own (when I was only about eight) telling us that "gaol" and "goal" were spelled the same way. When I piped up and contradicted him he flew into a fury and administered "the strap" to me in front of the class - terrifying at that age. My father subsequently accused him of being a communist.

Thanks for your reply, very interesting.

Although your strapping must have been traumatic (been there myself courtesy of an old skool schooling), the way you put your father's response is hilarious

[Beef Oven]

In its original, medical sense of an excessive volume of blood...or excessive fullness of blood vessels (OED) you find it without 'a':

1575 J. Banister Needefull Treat. Chyrurg. f. 25, In curing these kyndes of Ulcers, the causes must first be diligently searched, to witte whether it be Plethora, Cacochymia, or Cachexia.

But the very next citation is

1659 W. Chamberlayne Pharonnida i. i. 15 Flowd to a dangerous Plethora, or where Some Cause occult the Humours did prepare For that malignant Ill.

All the OED's more general modern examples have a or the, so I think your English master was wrong. Or you misunderstood him.

Thanks for this - maybe I did misunderstand him, he was a great teacher.

[jean]

I've always thought anathema a strange word. What is it ? a noun? an adjective ?

It's a noun.

But though the presence of an artilce is a good indication that it's a noun you're dealing with, its absence doesn't disprove that theory.

Quite a few nouns are commonly used without articles - poison just sprang to mind.

my online thesaurus gives hate as a synonym whereas I would have thought it was hateful

Hate isn't right - something hateful I would think nearer the mark - though I see the latest additions to the OED gloss it as though it were an adjective.

[Serial_Apologist]

I've always thought anathema a strange word. What is it ? a noun? an adjective ? my online thesaurus gives hate as a synonym whereas I would have thought it was hateful

I once surreptitiously used "anathematic" as the adjective, and was told by a qualified English teacher this was OK.

[Thropplenoggin]

I once surreptitiously used "anathematic" as the adjective, and was told by a qualified English teacher this was OK.

I hope they did so apothegmatically.

[mercia]

this link says you can have a complete anathema

http://sentence.yourdictionary.com/anathema

arsenic is a poison

[Bryn]

this link says you can have a complete anathema

http://sentence.yourdictionary.com/anathema

I'm trying in vain to think of an incomplete one.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm trying in vain to think of an incomplete one.