Re:The dwarfs of our vocabulary
by gumby on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @12:04PM
(#15028585)
I wouldn't downvote your comment but I can see why some would. The discussion is not about prescriptivism vs descriptivism but rather the origin of a specific wend in the language and whether it is ideopathic or not.
Even those who most joyfully embrace the flexibility of language need to be largely linguistically conservative else the meaning of a sentence is lost (consider Lafferty's story where the language changed every day -- Nine Hundred Grandmothers IIRC).
And in that list your condemnation of "correct" is itself conservatively prescriptivist as I have always read it (in this context) as a a shorthand extension of "typically customary" or "etymologically consistent"
Even those who most joyfully embrace the flexibility of language need to be largely linguistically conservative else the meaning of a sentence is lost (consider Lafferty's story where the language changed every day -- Nine Hundred Grandmothers IIRC).
And in that list your condemnation of "correct" is itself conservatively prescriptivist as I have always read it (in this context) as a a shorthand extension of "typically customary" or "etymologically consistent"