View Single Post
  #78  
Old September 30th 05, 08:37 PM
Floyd Davidson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

"Nostrobino" wrote:

I've been saying the misusage is ignorant. It is. I haven't said that the
people misusing the term are ignorant. On the contrary, I presume that most
of them are folks of at least ordinary intelligence who have innocently
picked the misusage up from Usenet and elsewhere. To be ignorant of some
particular state of affairs before one has the facts is hardly a shameful
thing. To try to DEFEND that ignorance after being apprised of the facts,
however, is stupid. Please note that I am making a careful distinction
between ignorance and stupidity. The former is often only temporary; the
latter tends to be lasting.


Your entire diatribe about language and word usage is then,
according to the above, *stupid*.

Language *is* dynamic. Dictionaries are *not* an authoritative
source of *correct* word usage, and this abjectly silly
suggestion that any jargon not found in a dictionary is
therefore wrong is a demonstration that you are ignorant about
this topic. Dictionaries are a compilation of current usage,
and have very little to do with what is or is not "correct".

Whether it is jargon, which might well be restricted to a small
enough fraction of all speakers and therefore will never show up
in any general dictionary, is unimportant. All that counts is
whether the speaker does in fact convey the desired meaning to
the target audience.

The essence of all that has previously been explained in detail
by others, and continued efforts to "DEFEND that ignorance" is,
in your own words: stupid.

--
FloydL. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)