Re: Today's the day
Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2016 7:22 pm
For another point of view, see an anonymous article on Superfine English in The Cornhill Magazine, new series, Vol. V (July to December 1885), pp. 626-635:
Your true prig of a pedant goes immensely out of his way to be vastly more correct than other people, and succeeds in the end in being vastly more ungrammatical, or vastly more illogical, or both at once. The common pronunciation, the common idiom, the common meaning attached to a word, are not nearly good enough or fine enough for him: he must try to get at the original sound, at the strict construction, at the true sense, and he always manages to blunder upon something far worse than the slight error, if error it be, which he attempts to avoid in his superfine correctness....And this leads us on to a second habit of the microscopic critic, which I venture to describe as the Etymological Fallacy. Your critic happens to know well some one particular language, let us say Greek or Latin; and so far as the words derived from that language are concerned (and so far only) he insists upon every word being rigidly applied in its strict original etymological meaning. He makes no allowance for the natural and beautiful growth of metaphor, and the transference of signification, which must necessarily affect the usage of all words in the course of time....For the truth is, it is quite useless for any one man to set himself up single-handed against the irresistible march of nations. Languages grow and are not made; they are the outcome of deep-seated popular forces, and the meanings which the people impose upon words are the meanings they have got to bear in the long-run, whether the pedants like it or no....One word as to the general underlying principle which pervades all these manifestations of superfine English. They are all alike the result of taking too much trouble about mere expression. Just as self-consciousness in manner produces the affected airs and graces, the poses and attitudes, the laughs and giggles, of Miss Jemima, so self-consciousness in modes of expression produces the absurd over-particular nicety of the national schoolmaster and the educated pedant.
Quite
Your true prig of a pedant goes immensely out of his way to be vastly more correct than other people, and succeeds in the end in being vastly more ungrammatical, or vastly more illogical, or both at once. The common pronunciation, the common idiom, the common meaning attached to a word, are not nearly good enough or fine enough for him: he must try to get at the original sound, at the strict construction, at the true sense, and he always manages to blunder upon something far worse than the slight error, if error it be, which he attempts to avoid in his superfine correctness....And this leads us on to a second habit of the microscopic critic, which I venture to describe as the Etymological Fallacy. Your critic happens to know well some one particular language, let us say Greek or Latin; and so far as the words derived from that language are concerned (and so far only) he insists upon every word being rigidly applied in its strict original etymological meaning. He makes no allowance for the natural and beautiful growth of metaphor, and the transference of signification, which must necessarily affect the usage of all words in the course of time....For the truth is, it is quite useless for any one man to set himself up single-handed against the irresistible march of nations. Languages grow and are not made; they are the outcome of deep-seated popular forces, and the meanings which the people impose upon words are the meanings they have got to bear in the long-run, whether the pedants like it or no....One word as to the general underlying principle which pervades all these manifestations of superfine English. They are all alike the result of taking too much trouble about mere expression. Just as self-consciousness in manner produces the affected airs and graces, the poses and attitudes, the laughs and giggles, of Miss Jemima, so self-consciousness in modes of expression produces the absurd over-particular nicety of the national schoolmaster and the educated pedant.
Quite
Wasn't Trump ranting about the Iranian nuclear deal being a betrayal?