Merged - posts about new forum

[El Gordo]

Well, not according to the OED, anyway. But I think most dictionaries now accept the current use of anticipate to mean "expect".

Ah, the inevitable defence.

Here's what happens.

People misuse words.

If enough people misuse a word, it enters that linguistic wrestling ring where each side tries to win the prize.

The game is up if it eventually gets into a dictionary as 'an alternative use' or 'slang' or even helpfully described as 'commonly misunderstood to mean....'.

Hurrah! Now it's in the dictionary, which is where people turn when anxious to defend their vocabulary. "Well the dictionary gives it as an alternative...."

Poor old dictionaries. What are they supposed to do? They have to acknowledge the widespread misuse of a word, and in doing so, give it the credence they are trying to choke off.

Net result is that two perfectly good words with different, but related. meanings, end up being bullied into meaning the same thing.

Infer means roughly the opposite of imply, yet according to the dictionaries, the battle to keep them apart is all but lost. To express the idea of infer, we now have to use several messy little words instead of just one.

Expect - anticipate. Someone somewhere once decided that anticipate sounded a bit brainier than expect, even if they meant different things. The bullying of the word began, until the barbarians got their way.

Disinterested - uninterested.

Alternative - alternate. Grrr. I had a row with the US Runner's World magazine about this one:

Your dream marathon sold out? Fear not! Check out these 13 great alternate races.

I took them to task about their co-destruction of the word but they defended it because it appears in some American dictionary. I looked it up there, and saw that it was listed in a footnote along the lines of "now sometimes used to mean alternative".

And that's all the justification they need. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Misuse something, force the dictionary to acknowledge the misuse, quote the dictionary to justify their misuse.


This morning I handed Runner's World a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their misused word and issue a correction, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this website is at war with the Rodale barbarians.


Er, where was I...?

Trouble is, we get the 'usage' argument. "But language is dynamic... a living thing.... ever-changing... reflects the changing world in which we live.... " [continued page 94]

I agree with all that. I celebrate new words, and love the malleable nature of language. But some words are just used wrongly -- y'know IN ERROR -- and no one will ever admit it.

You're wrong! All wrong! About everything! I'm right!

It's not a war you're going to win, anyhow.

You're right!

Eesnot the end of the world, cobber.

You're wrong!