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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (3330)	8/16/1999 12:07:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4711

And why nitpick over such a minor matter? (I hope you were not planning to do so in the name of the Grammar Lab!!) I can understand the urge to get Terry <g>, but save your fire for the big stuff! Have to disagree with you, Joan. Changing usages of words is not, IMO, a "minor" matter -- it is at the heart of any discussion of usage. [I know this is called the Grammar and Spelling Lab, but we have always included usage, and as I recall that was in many of the potential modified titles you were at one point considering.] I welcomed Steven's post because I, too, have been disturbed by this shift in meaning. Now, immediately, and others are perfectly good words to signify the immediate present. There is no other single word which can adequately replace presently -- soon and shortly don't seem to me to do the same job. Thus, I think that the classic sense of presently is worth preserving. The tendency of English today is to lose the nuances of words. Infer and imply get used interchangably. Less and fewer, lie and lay, motor and engine, and many others are losing their distinctive meanings. I, for one, believe that precision in language is worth fighting for, and I know you do, too. Each time a word is changed in a way which loses distinctiveness, our ability as a people to think precisely is diminished. Thus, I don't consider Steven's question to be a nitpick over a minor matter, but to be very appropriate issue to raise on this thread, and for us to discuss. I consider the loss of precision in language to be very much the "big stuff." (Much bigger, for example, than whether to put a comma inside or outside the quotation marks, which discussion took quite a turn on this thread not too long ago without any suggestion of nitpicking.) Having said that, I am concerned to find in my Random House Webster's College Dictionary a usage note contending that the meaning "now" dates back to the 15th century and "is currently in standard use in all varieties of speech and writing," and the meaning "soon" arose later during the 16th century, so that it could be argued that returning to the "now" usage is really a return to the original meaning. I will have to consult my OED (not as a weapon but as a resource <g>) when I get home tonight.