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The Love Child of the Return of The Thread on Word Usage that Grates like Blackboard Fingernails...
February 3, 2010 - 10:36am
When one can buy "gourmet" hot dogs or "gourmet" dog food, has the word "gourmet" lost all meaning?
Depends on what you thought its meaning was before:
Given its etymology, I think "gourmet hot dogs" may be appropriate.
I don't think so. Gourmand has a different meaning.
Since you mentioned it, gourmand is used more frequently in France than gourmet. I move in rather provincial circles in France, but nevertheless have rarely come across any use of gourmet there.
What does the gourmet dog food taste like??
Yesterday, on the previous incarnation of this thread, I mentioned the egregious substitution of "issue" for "problem." There's another, burgeoning substitution for "problem" that is starting to replace "issue" and that's "challenge."
This is like déja vu all over again. I think unionist mentioned "challenge" as a substitute for "issue" when we talked about this before.
Where is that thread?
"i-Anything"...especially when it's the publicly-funded CBC crowing about Apple's latest locked-up gadget.
"Preventable deaths" (as currently seen in this resurrected thread). X, Y or Z as the cause of death may be prevented or avoided, but death itself is not preventable. Period.
Only if you think death is the "end result" of life.
If one goes along with your argument, when someone is credited with "saving lives," we're really just saying "delaying the inevitable."
Speaking of the philosophy of Albert Camus, whatever happened to that swell babbler named sisyphus?
Yes that is true, it the logical extension of my argument.
What I was talking about, though, was that the phrase "preventable death" grates on my nerves like the sound of fingernails on a blackboard, I am happy to report that I don't find the phrase "saving lives" the least bit annoying, probably because it is much less presumptuous. There is no suggesting that a "saved" life will never end, just that the current threat to it has been stopped, diverted or avoided. I am all in favour of that, as much stoppage, diversion and avoidance as I can get please - delay, delay, delay - and, in the meantime, a round of delay and avoidance for everyone else at the same time. CHEERS.
I'm pretty sure I heard someone on the radio this morning say "without further adieu." I kind of love the poeticism of that line.
What about the hostage who was tied up and experienced undo hardship trying to free herself?
Hee, Unionist.
This reminds me of Tobias Wolff's short story "Bullet in the Brain," where a cynical, jaded book critic gets shot in the head by a bank robber who too-closely resembles his constitutive cliches, and in a protracted moment, recalls his one pure, genuine childhood moment:
It's beautiful, Catchfire, but the rest of the story is somewhat on the dark side...
I just read about someone engaged in the act of "reigning in."
Is this what that would look like?
Re: the meaning of "gourmet": as far as I can tell it means "not actually lethal if consumed in moderation."
Sometimes an error is almost better than correct usage...
Check the "Comments" section.
What the...? I haven't seen this one before:
I believe the word that our lobbyist really wants to use is "request."
Could this "ask" abomination be related to the current gambling craze, in which "tells" play so important a role?
I wonder who edits Time magazine. No wonder so many USians prefer visual media. Right after the above passage we find this howler:
"Ask" is used in that manner in fund-raising campaigns as well.
Using "ask" as a noun is a common Britishism. As in, "we've got to win the final three games to have a shot at the league. It's a big ask for the boys, but I think we can pull it out."
I don't suppose they can blame that one on Guillaume le Bâtard.
The reason for the devolution of our language and culture cannot be put much more succinctly than that.
That's a wonderful short story. Thanks for linking to it.
I recently read a student paper about the War Measures Act that talked about "Marshall Law."
In the more brutish colonies, we would pull it off.
The "news" presenter on AM640, Tina Trigiani, just said "passer-bys."
Couldn't you just pass 'er by?
Let me guess, the devolution of language and culture only started within past hundred years. Or perhaps it's been on going since the peak of the Greek, Roman, Chinese, Indian, Mayan etcetera golden ages. Yet some how society manages to go on. Funny how culture 100(0) years ago always seems so much more elegant.
P-sto, I'm just starting to tolerate "et cetera" instead of the more pompous "et cætera". Don't ask me to devolve all the way down to "etcetera". Please.
Ouch I think I've been called pompous and uncouth in the same statement. Bravo Unionist.
I thought I was calling myself pompous - and trying to be funny - but have it your way if you like.
Haha, I understood the comment to say that I was being pompous by spelling the word out in full but failing because I did so in the least elegant way possible. The rather ironic thing is if I were writing for a more formal purpose, say an academic paper I'd use etc. because that's the convention.
Despite frequent use of web shorthands based on my mood I have an inclination to write things out in full. Bit of a reaction to the frequent unnecessary shorting of words which annoys the hell out of me. For example when some one in conversation abbreviates computer to comp, can't stand it.
P-sto, sorry to belabour this tiny point, but my post was intended to be a pompous jab at you for joining two separate Latin words into a single word.