Pedants' Paradise

[amateur51]

Here's a new word - to glom onto each other. Try the third paragraph of this interesting article:

http://www.livescience.com/10288-kin...akthrough.html

Gosh Pabs!

The content is pretty boggling too - and they did it with mirrors

[amateur51]

I really don't know, but I think I rather like the word.

"Ladies and gents, could I ask you to glom together by the Swiss Cheese plant to make room for other passengers while we await the arrival of the coach"

It has a certain something, wouldn't you say?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I would understand "How are you doing?" to mean "How are things going with you (generally)?" rather than the more personal "How are you?"

[And of course "I'm doing good" would not be for me to say, but for others ]

It all comes back to Sparky's Magic Piano, when our young hopeful says to Miss Spear, "When will I be able to play real good?"
Miss Spear puts on a record to inspire Sparky, who says, "Mr Badowski can sure sure play real good".

I once had a version of this with a middle class English Sparky, but with the same grammatical nightmare script. It sounded laughable, whereas the American version sounds just about plausible, for reasons I shall not elaborate on.

[mercia]

can we allow the word "caveated" as used just now on R4 news ?

........ after the Prime Minister's statement on energy prices, the energy minister's words were "more caveated" [i.e. more cautious]

[vinteuil]

can we allow the word "caveated" as used just now on R4 news ?

... where's the :wince: emoticon when you need it.

An ancient second cousin of mine ( a Dean of Llandaff, no less... ) was notorious for regularly inserting into his sentences, all in the most querulous of voices, ".. erm, and, erm, erm, and, erm, let a, erm, caveat, here be, erm, made, erm, erm ... "

[Finzi4ever]

delightful misuse of language on BBC Oxford this morning: in a discussion about bringing electric tricycles into the city for tourists, a spokesman for the firm who makes them hoped the city council would not be "too prurient and say they're not for Oxford as we're just about history, as all cities need to move with the times"... Now which adjective that sounds like prurient did he mean to say? On the positive side, the breakfast presenter, within minutes of this corrected a contributor's 'less' to 'fewer'. Well done Phil Gayle!

[Serial_Apologist]

Now which adjective that sounds like prurient did he mean to say?

Prudence discourages me from making a guess...


(You'll have to ask Prudence )

[jean]

can we allow the word "caveated" as used just now on R4 news ?

We can't really complain, if we've been using a third person singular as a noun all this time, that it finally seeks to return to its verbal origins.

A bit like exit...

[french frank]

We can't really complain, if we've been using a third person singular as a noun all this time, that it finally seeks to return to its verbal origins.[/I]

Then let it be the correct form. Cavit? Caverit? Cavebat? Caveret?

[jean]

It would have to be both plural and passive, I think.

[handsomefortune]

with the cavebat that i don't have to use it french frank!

[mangerton]

It would have to be both plural and passive, I think.

And subjunctive, like "caveat"? That would give us "caveantur".

I think to re-verbify ( a dreadful word in itself!) "caveat" is a shocking idea. If "more cautious" was meant, there's the perfectly good Latin form "cautior".

None of this is of any use to our august PM, however. Did it not recently come to light that he did not know the meaning of "magna carta"?

[french frank]

It would have to be both plural and passive, I think.

In that particular case, yes (the energy prices were 'more caveated'), though the presumed verb 'to caveat' doesn't mean quite the same as 'cavēre' anyway ...

[jean]

No, it means something like to hedge about with caveats.

And as the original verb form has become an English noun, it can only reclaim its verbal status through the medium of English.

Which is what it has successfully achieved in the example cited: were caveated.

(I rather like it.)

[french frank]

(I rather like it.)

Not sure. It could be misheard: