From Breitbart News:
“Coronate”? Ain’t no such fucking word. At a coronation, one is crowned, not “coronated”. Guess who coined the term? Jesse Jackson, back in the 1990s (saw it on TV).
Hell, I even saw Mort Kondracke say it on a Fox News panel discussion once, and the host didn’t hit him over the head with a chair, like I would have done.
Note the reaction from SpelChek (in this very post):
Of all the times for my AK-47 to be at the pawn shop… and STG, if someone tells me they found this abortion of a word in some poxy modern dictionary ergo it’s okay to say it, I’m going to come to their house. With a Molotov cocktail.
In a similar vein, one of my pet peeves is the recently coined “orientate.” Sure, you have orientation, but one is oriented there, not orientated.
It’s in the Oxford Dictionary. Earliest known use is in 1623.
And it was wrong back then, too.
Nah, just a typo – the word they wanted was “cornhole” her.
Terrapod won this thread
She’s all yours, boys.
I think we’re overlooking the fact that English is not a language, but a dialect. Younger people are finding it increasingly dificult to read Robert Burton or the King James Version as the vocabulary expands and mutates, as does the grammar.
In the current case I think it’s more a matter of assuming that the longer form is intellectually superior.
.
Language and style do shift. I can read, with pleasure, SOME late Victorian writing. Twain, for example, or the lighter Dickens. Most of it is so turgid than I find it too impenetrable to be pleasurable reading. A shining exception is Grant’s autobiography, but Grant was an exceptionally clear writer. Kipling hardly counts; he wrote so clearly that he was more the first of the great Modern authors than an example of the age he was born in.
Shakespeare is clear once you see it performed, but difficult going until you learn to think of it that way.
I never, for whatever reason, found the King James Bible difficult to read. I consider it a clear example of a miracle; a translation done by a committee with so few gross errors.
How about
certificated ? Um, no, it’s certified !
certificating, nope, try certifying !!
or
decisioned or decisioning ?? How about decided and deciding ?
I actually heard a manager in a meeting use the last two !!
The one that bothers me the most is the misuse of the words “historic and historical” , most often by some TV talking head. They say historical when they mean historic – usually when they are attempting to add importance to some forgettable announcement by some Politian or a false claim about an event.
So does using the verb “coronate” cause you to suffer a coronary?
It might do ME.