From Townhall we get Kurt Schlicter, who is a reasonably good polemicist, as polemicists go. All goes well with his latest piece, until this point:
Things are a mess, and the Democrats are doing everything they can to make them messier. They are holding onto their precious pangolin pandemic panic like Brian Stelter grips a pie, ferociously fighting to keep hope dying by denying our kids school and millions of us a livelihood, all to eek out a win in November.
What, are we five years old, and using phonetic spelling?
THE WORD IS “EKE“, NOT “EEK”. FFS, IT’S A WORD CONTAINING ONLY THREE LETTERS. HOW DIFFICULT CAN IT BE TO GET THEM IN THE RIGHT ORDER?
Do they even have editors at Townhall ?
Kim,
I’d almost bet the farm that the “editor” used a spell checker of some stripe against the piece … and while it did pass spelling muster, it obviously didn’t pass the usage test. It is for this reason that I detest application spell checks of all kinds. And don’t get me started on the frequent misuse of to/too, it’s/its, where/were/we’re/wear, there/their/they’re, your/you’re, and one of my favorites … sight/site/cite. And then there is the word “data” … the plural form of the word oft used as a singular. It’s barely later than 7am on Monday and I’m already wondering … “is it too early in the day for a shot of 100 proof rye in my coffee?”
“Data”has become a collective noun ( e.g. crowd) so in the modern vernacular you can use it in the singular or the plural, according to Strunk.
And nowadays, it’s NEVER too early for a little pick-me-up.
I play a lot of board games. Drives me up the wall when someone rolls “one dice”.
Schlicter’s filling in for Hugh Hewitt this week on the radio. He’s been playing some recent audio from Keith Ellison (bees pee upon him) where the congresscritter-turned-AG spewed some malarkey about “wouldn’t a woman who got sexually assaulted (probably by him *spit*) rather talk to someone trained to deal with what she’s dealing with, instead of someone who’s main training is using a firearm?” and asking lady listeners for their reactions. But Schlicter isn’t really giving them much time to talk, which I sorta understand because radio and he wants to hear from as many women as possible, but he was cutting them off quite abruptly, and it was getting on my nerves.
Gourmet: one who seldom enjoys a meal.
.
One of my favorites these days is someone has “gone missing.” We’ve all seen such phrases as
“gone dining” i.e. gone to dine or “gone dancing” i.e. gone to dance, but “gone missing” i.e. “gone to miss”?? WTF?
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I think I’ve encountered ‘gone missing’ in usage back to the days of Black Mask in the 1930’s.
To my ear, “gone missing” implies an intentional act to not be found on the part of the person now missed. Unless they decided to get lost and start a new life, “disappeared” might be the better term. “Gone missing” is an oddly sanitized term.
Kim, this problem is evident everywhere these days. I was perusing the inclusion/diversity statement on the website of our local university and caught them using bases in place of basis.
I politely brought this to their attention along with a gentle suggestion they include someone who understands grammar to assist in building their site.
To their credit they did correct the statement immediately.
Scott
Actually Bases is the plural of Basis
Alternately Baseis( Greek form)
Not used much, so we don’t recognize the error since the error is almost universal, and the difference in pronunciation is almost nil
Look on the bright side. If everyone spoke perfect Latin back in the day, today we would not have Italian, French, Spanish etc.
But in all seriousness, I would be happy if folks could just get “loose/looser”, and “lose/loser” correct.
Do I dare ask about something “any fule kno”?
As written by Nigel Molesworth, a character in Geoffrey Wilans’s cartoon books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Molesworth
Priceless.
I am mildly amused that in criticising Schlichter’s spelling you mis-spelled his name.
Schlichter is his name, with an “h” and I am sensitive to that because my matrilineal name is “Schlichting”. I had some emails with Schlichter a long while back trying to figure out what a Schlicht was, not to mention a Schlichter and a Schlichting.
My mother’s dorf was well aware that paternity is much less certain that maternity, so she was Schlichting’s Lise, I was Schlichting’s Fred and my maternal Grandmother was Schlichting’s Sophie. Any husband who didn’t like it, could lump it. I married a woman with a Czech mother so my oldest son is Hruska’s Stefan to my relatives in the dorf.
My younger adopted son is part black, his ancestors being escaped slaves who wound up in Nova Scotia and I gravely fear my elderly German aunts refer to him as der Türke. But he’s a handsome devil so they all love him.
Eek for eke looks like a self-important autocorrect gremlin to me.
Don’t you hate technology with an opinion?
This discussion is just a scream.
Autocorrect is the work of the Devil, and whoever invented it should go straight to Hello.
it’s properly called “autoincorrect”