Language, please!

briantrumpet

TheBigBean said:

briantrumpet said:

rjsterry said:

briantrumpet said:

laurentian said:

briantrumpet said:

laurentian said:

Anybody else heard or seen the word "upmost" being used in place of "utmost" . . . ?

https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/1067/upmost/

So it's a word that is "almost mainstream". I just thought it was wrong!

It is still 'wrong', but eventually, if enough people use the wrong word, it becomes at least 'acceptable', however much the pedants scream. At the moment, 'upmost' is still not common enough for that.

It's not pedantry to expect people to be able to speak their own language.

Pragmatic pedantry knows when to give up on the incoming tide and remove your wind break to somewhere higher on the beach.

I can see me eventually having to accept my dislike of the US usage "To protest the verdict", though I will still permit myself to say I don't like it. The modern pronunciation of 'margarine' is 'wrong', but as everyone says it with a soft G, it's now right, if you don't want people thinking you're weird.

Too often the test. I never know what to call the singular of dice. Either weird or wrong.

So often I'm have a similar quandary when I use a candelabrum.

briantrumpet

Ditto "Just one panino, give it to me..."

masjer

The use of the word hello, as a greeting, only became common after the invention of the telephone. Hello was first in print in 1827 and in general use by the 1860s, but mainly as a way of attracting attention (hey).
Alexander Graham Bell (credited inventor of telephone) used ahoy as the way to answer a call, hence Monty Burns (Simpsons) ahoy-hoy.
Competitors Elisha Gray and Thomas Edison used hello, which led to its popularity as a greeting.
All this from last night's BBC podcast.

First.Aspect

Other versions of hallo, hola, hullo etc. go back a lot further. According to Wiki.

pinno

First.Aspect said:

This hasn't been a promising start to the thread.

No surprise really.
BT wants everything compartmentalised and so each topic has to have a specific place instead of discussion meandering as it would do naturally.
You and I may chuck our smalls in the same drawer but Brian has a pigeon hole for each colour and each type of garment.
(That's a metaphor BTW and an observation, not a criticism, I mean we are all somewhere on the autistic spectrum ).

The only thing missing is a route map for this topic eclecticism but a conversation with the site administrators may proffer a solution.

rjsterry

briantrumpet said:

TheBigBean said:

briantrumpet said:

rjsterry said:

briantrumpet said:

laurentian said:

briantrumpet said:

laurentian said:

Anybody else heard or seen the word "upmost" being used in place of "utmost" . . . ?

https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/1067/upmost/

So it's a word that is "almost mainstream". I just thought it was wrong!

It is still 'wrong', but eventually, if enough people use the wrong word, it becomes at least 'acceptable', however much the pedants scream. At the moment, 'upmost' is still not common enough for that.

It's not pedantry to expect people to be able to speak their own language.

Pragmatic pedantry knows when to give up on the incoming tide and remove your wind break to somewhere higher on the beach.

I can see me eventually having to accept my dislike of the US usage "To protest the verdict", though I will still permit myself to say I don't like it. The modern pronunciation of 'margarine' is 'wrong', but as everyone says it with a soft G, it's now right, if you don't want people thinking you're weird.

Too often the test. I never know what to call the singular of dice. Either weird or wrong.

So often I'm have a similar quandary when I use a candelabrum.

Why worry about people thinking you are weird?

surrey_commuter

Could so many people refer to a piece or furniture as Chester Draws that it becomes the correct spelling?

briantrumpet

surrey_commuter said:

Could so many people refer to a piece or furniture as Chester Draws that it becomes the correct spelling?

Possible, but unlikely, as I think the correct phrase isn't weird enough to be forgotten. I'll have a dig around my brain and see if I can think if any eggcorns that have replaced the correct word. (I'll ignore the US 'alternate' replacing 'alternative', as that's slightly different.)

rjsterry

Was reading about the French aujourd'hui, where the d'hui bit is an old word meaning of today: literally of the day of today. Apparently French people are starting to say au jour d'aujourd'hui and this is a common phenomenon across languages where phrases get contracted into words and then the first part of the phrase is reapplied. I couldn't think of an English example, but I suppose it's a bit like tautonyms such as Bredon Hill.

briantrumpet

rjsterry said:

Was reading about the French aujourd'hui, where the d'hui bit is an old word meaning of today: literally of the day of today. Apparently French people are starting to say au jour d'aujourd'hui and this is a common phenomenon across languages where phrases get contracted into words and then the first part of the phrase is reapplied. I couldn't think of an English example, but I suppose it's a bit like tautonyms such as Bredon Hill.

I'm sure David Crystal discusses this in one of his books, but I can't remember which one. I can't think of an English example either, though 'PIN number' and 'PAT test' come close, for a different reason.

On the French habit of "très très" (very very common), I enjoy the odd "très très très" when I hear it: linguistically, it's an illustration of how humans need to find ways of emphasizing linguistically, but by such usage gradually erode the power of the original words.

surrey_commuter

With Chris Pincher and Boris Johnson being headline news would this be the place to discuss nominative determinism?

ddraver

briantrumpet said:

On the French habit of "très très" (very very common), I enjoy the odd "très très très" when I hear it: linguistically, it's an illustration of how humans need to find ways of emphasizing linguistically, but by such usage gradually erode the power of the original words.

I was told to say "formidable" instead of "tres tres tres" by my GCSE teacher.

The injustice...

briantrumpet

Back to English, and a rather lovely Twitter thread...

https://twitter.com/dtmooreeditor/status/1569366666844192769

TheBigBean

The verb edit is derived from editor and not the other
way around,

briantrumpet

TheBigBean said:

The verb edit is derived from editor and not the other
way around,

One of many back-formations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_back-formations

briantrumpet

Haha, and circularly, 'backform' (v) is a backformation from 'backformation' (n) in their list.

rjsterry

briantrumpet said:

Back to English, and a rather lovely Twitter thread...

https://twitter.com/dtmooreeditor/status/1569366666844192769

Was funny seeing him freak out at the thousands of extra followers he picked up because Neil Gaiman retweeted him.

Also nice to realise that a swashbuckler is a guy who extravagantly waves a small shield around rather than doing up a belt.

First.Aspect

So, the Oxford comma. Does this hold the NHS back?

First.Aspect

Or, if you had done a whole degree there, would you appreciate its benefits?

briantrumpet

First.Aspect said:

So, the Oxford comma. Does this hold the NHS back?

Dunno. I'd ask my parents, Lynne Truss and Noam Chomsky, but both my parents are dead, so I'm just left with Truss and Chomsky.

briantrumpet

To carry on the 'architect' subject that's exercised @rjsterry , the word itself is an oddity, as it's the only noun that ends '-tect'.

Etymology: French architecte or Italian architetto, < Latin architectus , < Greek ἀρχιτέκτων , < ἀρχι- (see archi- prefix) + τέκτων builder, craftsman. Several of the derivatives are formed as if on Latin tectus < tegĕre; e.g. architective, -tor, -ture.

See those three suggested 'derivatives' - architective, architector, and architecture.

So I'm still not sure why 'architect' has ended up being such an oddity.

rjsterry

Etymonline reckons it's via Italian and French, so I guess the original tecton ending might have got mangled along the way. Italian and Spanish just dropped the N to get to arquitecto. Most European languages seem to have a variant, although Welsh goes with pensaer, which translates as head carpenter so I think that is just a straight translation of the Greek.

rjsterry

This is sublime.

https://twitter.com/matthias_rein/status/1589297153507495937?t=eriHiUIB5_INB9ujWHBWxg&amp;s=19

briantrumpet

rjsterry said:

Etymonline reckons it's via Italian and French, so I guess the original tecton ending might have got mangled along the way. Most European languages seem to have a variant.

An architect friend of mine has just mentioned exactly that link with 'tectonic'. I never knew that the two words were linked.

rjsterry

briantrumpet said:

rjsterry said:

Etymonline reckons it's via Italian and French, so I guess the original tecton ending might have got mangled along the way. Most European languages seem to have a variant.

An architect friend of mine has just mentioned exactly that link with 'tectonic'. I never knew that the two words were linked.

Oh, blimey. Architectural theorists and writers *love* wanging on about tectonic this and that. Bertold Lubetkin, one of the pioneers of Modernism in Britain named his collective Tecton and there's a more recent practice called Architecton in Bristol.

briantrumpet

rjsterry said:

briantrumpet said:

rjsterry said:

Etymonline reckons it's via Italian and French, so I guess the original tecton ending might have got mangled along the way. Most European languages seem to have a variant.

An architect friend of mine has just mentioned exactly that link with 'tectonic'. I never knew that the two words were linked.

Oh, blimey. Architectural theorists and writers *love* wanging on about tectonic this and that. Bertold Lubetkin, one of the pioneers of Modernism in Britain named his collective Tecton and there's a more recent practice called Architecton in Bristol.

Not entirely surprising, I guess... from the OED:

Of or pertaining to building, or construction in general; constructional, constructive: used esp. in reference to architecture and kindred arts.

1656 T. Blount Glossographia Tectonick (tectonicus), of or belonging to a builder.
1864 Daily Tel. 1 Aug. That law of necessity and of demand which is at the foundation of all tectonic art.
1903 G. B. Brown Arts in Early Eng. II. 178 A form produced..by the exigencies of construction—or, to use a convenient term familiar in Germany, a tectonic form.

focuszing723

This is such a massive piece of architecture, archetypal of whats involved in modern industry today.

TheBigBean

Complexify and laggard just added to my vocabulary. Nice words.

briantrumpet

I do enjoy trying out words on school pupils, individually, or in groups. I'm often intrigued by how limited their vocabulary can be, especially since I'm in contexts with lots of switched-on young people. I remember being amused, years ago, when asked about the meaning of the word 'melancholy' one pupil said "Is it a fruit" (he went on to read law at Oxford), and another said "Is it a vegetable?" I'm afraid I might have guffawed a bit at the second one, having heard the first one earlier in the day.

Anyway, my latest one was 'ephemeral'. Out of a group of about 20, only one knew it, and she gave a dictionary definition, pretty much verbatim.

So, as a straw poll, without cheating, how many of you know it, or don't? Honest answers on a postcard...

I know vocabulary increases with age - like TBB above, one hoovers up nice words as you go - but each one of us has our own lexicon, built up through our personal experiences, and I've learnt never to be surprised at my own ignorance or that of others.

rjsterry

Laggard is nice.