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

To: Jack Clarke who wrote (1846)	2/10/1999 7:00:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

From another thread: "I have several recent analcyst reports detailing this debacle and what they are recommending as course of action." LOL - new one on me!

To: Jack Clarke who wrote (1846)	2/12/1999 6:06:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4711

Being well outside the mainstream of US English, I occasionally encounter constructions that seem very strange to me, but perfectly ordinary to many others. Saw two in the last few days. The narrator of a Discovery Channel episode that my son was watching referred to an explorer becoming "disorientated". Is this normal? When did we stick the extra syllable on "to orient". An SI post described someone as being "a difficult person to gift". I couldn't figure out what the hell was being said; finally discerned that the person in question was difficult to select gifts for. Is this the way we talk now? Steve

To: Jack Clarke who wrote (1846)	2/27/1999 3:27:00 AM
From: David C. Burns	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4711

While I'm complaining, has anyone noted the emergence of the word "impotency"? To me the noun should be "impotence" and the adjective is "impotent". I don't see an need for another noun describing the condition of being impotent. For example, a violent person exhibits the condition known as violence, not "violency". see A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, H. W. Fowler LOVE OF THE LONG WORD. ... Mr. Pecksniff, we are told, was in the frequent habit of using any word that occurred to him as having a good sound, and rounding a sentence well, without much care for its meaning. He still has his followers. ... LONG VARIANTS. 'The better the writer, the shorter his words' would be a statement needing many exceptions for individual persons and particular subjects; but for all that it would be broadly true, especially about English writers. Those who run to long words are mainly the unskilful and tasteless; they confuse pomposity with dignity, flaccidity with ease, and bulk with force; see LOVE OF THE LONG WORD. A special form of long word is now to be illustrated. When a word for the notion wanted exists, some people (1) forget or do not know that word, and make up another from the same stem with an extra suffix or two; or (2) are not satisfied with a mere current word, and resolve to decorate it, also with an extra suffix; or (3) have heard a longer form that resembles it, and are not aware that this other form is appropriated to another sense. Cases of (1) and (2) are often indistinguishable; the motive differs, but the result is the same; and they will here be mixed together ... . (1) and (2). Needless lengthenings of established words due to oversight or caprice: administrate (administer); assertative (assertive); contumacity (contumacy); cultivatable (cultivable); dampen (damp, v.); denunciate (denounce); dubiety (doubt); epistolatory (epistolary); experimentalize (experiment, v.); extemporaneously (ex tempore); filtrate (filter, v.); [my own particular peeve] preventative (preventive); quieten (quiet, v.); transportation (transport).