Re:I Owe It All to Community College
by jejones3141 on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @09:37PM
(#8890591)
OTOH, were it not for bad Latin speakers, we wouldn't have the Romance languages. A John Simon/William Safire of the era is an important source of data on their development--he wrote a list of proper Latin terms and the corresponding words in the bad Latin he was seeing and/or hearing. Dang it, it's not caballus, it's equus!
So you're saying that when I correct someone publicly, I'm not being an insufferable pedant, I'm contemporaneously documenting usage for future linguists!
Ooh, I'm gonna get so much mileage out of that one.
> Biweekly means every two weeks.
Since when, exactly? http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/18553?rskey=7qC25f&result=2#ei...
Hmm. Guess I should have looked it up before posting. Serves me right for not being more bi-curious.
While it has meant both every two weeks and twice a week for a long time, this is an interesting case where convincing people otherwise would pretty clearly improve our language. Even the page you linked to implies this:
> The ambiguous usage is confusing, and might be avoided by the use of semi-
> Fortnightly doesn't mean anything outside of the Commonwealth
Really? I live and learn. I thought that was commonplace.
In the spirit the correctness and accuracy, which Commonwealth? :)
Please keep (politely) correcting people. It's only us against the hordes!