Comments on: Print, pixels and prescriptivism

By: Kaleberg

Kaleberg — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 03:38:10 +0000

I must hang out with weirdos. I’ve never heard anything but ob-jine for OBGYN, and I often hear people use jejune, frequently correctly. Then again, we have a household apotropaic. Now, if I could just figure out what cravel-built means. The OED is not forthcoming.

By: bianca steele

bianca steele — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:43:20 +0000

Marcel,
I’m not sure what your point is. Is it the apparent contradiction between “never used correctly” in the first paragraph and “rarely used correctly” in the second? The first was mostly a joke, so it doesn’t seem necessary to have been 100% consistent.

Or did I myself commit some error in punctuation?

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:44:40 +0000

@Zach, if you mean that a statement begs for a question to be asked, then perhaps you should use “begs for the question”.

By: Dave2

Dave2 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:24:14 +0000

tarylcabot wrote, “Seems to be strictly a blog deconstruction.”

Could you please explain?

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:07:31 +0000

"...and yes, I deliberately placed the question mark outside of the quotation marks, since the whole sentence is a question..." The "punctuation inside the quotation" rule isn't universal. As far as I know, most of the Commonwealth places the punctuation outside the quote. In my opinion, it's an exceedingly stupid rule that is both contrary to common sense and prone to creating confusion. I always place the punctuation outside the quote and always expect someone to correct me. No one ever has. I also expected someone to take issue with my claim that acronyms (defined as initialisms pronounced as words) are very recent and did not exist prior to the twentieth century. Acronyms are so common these days, and they are essential to many folk etymologies, that it's hard to believe they haven't always existed and I was very skeptical the first time I heard this claim from a linguist. But it's true. And it is handy to debunk, prima facie, all folk etymologies that utilize acronyms. Tarylcabot muses that he "did not know there was another meaning and have never heard anyone employing the petitio principii usage. Seems to be strictly a blog deconstruction." That's odd, because I've heard many people use it correctly—and it's not as if I grew up as a fosterling in a philosophy department or anything like that. Here's a completely trivial irritation of mine that is only justifiable by an extreme prescriptivism that I don't agree with (meaning that I recognize that I'm being irrational about it): perk as a shortening of perquisite. It should be perq, dammit.

By: Martin Bento

Martin Bento — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:24:46 +0000

Micah, interesting. I would pronounce “BTW” as “by the way” – “B-T-W” just sounds stupid to me and actually takes longer to say. Maybe I’m becoming old school.

By: The Fool

The Fool — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:28:17 +0000

@Zach who said, ‘I hate it when people get up in arms over the “misuse” of the phrase “begging the question” because, while it does have a very specific meaning in the context of debating, the literal meaning of the words has nothing to do with an argument that assumes what needs to be proven.”

Yes it does. A question-begging argument begs by trying to get something for nothing, i.e. a specific conclusion to the very question that is at issue.

By: micah

micah — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:01:29 +0000

Martin: I’ve certainly seen some internet shorthand pronounced as initialisms; BTW and LOL come to mind. I don’t know about OTOH, though.

The only abbreviation I can think of that definitively has the behavior you’re thinking of is “iff”.

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:47:14 +0000

HTML is a metatypo generator designed to humiliate pedants.

By: marcel

marcel — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:43:45 +0000

Oops. Close link

By: marcel

marcel — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:43:16 +0000

While we (and you know who you are) are being petty, snarky &/or pedantic, I thought I'd toss this grenade ad feminam. I suspect that this thread contains other errors, but this one leapt out at me and grabbed my by the throat. Bianca Steele: Don't you mean that "the word is always used wrongly", or perhaps "the word is always incorrectly used"? (and yes, I deliberately placed the question mark outside of the quotation marks, since the whole sentence is a question).

By: lemuel pitkin

lemuel pitkin — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:09:21 +0000

So is there any reason why O for ‘of’ is pronounced (and capitalized) in initialisms for government departments, but not in other initialisms?

By: Mark R

Mark R — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:07:58 +0000

I’m prompted by discussion of initialisms and acronyms to ask about the abbreviation OBGYN, used in the U.S. for obstetricians and gynaecologists (well, originally for obstetrics and gynaecology as disciplines I think, but regularly heard now in phrases like “I visited the OBGYN”). It is pronounced “oh-bee-gee-why-enn”, even though it’s formed out of two words where the letters form syllables, and are not initials. Following the pattern of “sitrep” for “situation report” or “satnav” for “satellite navigation” you might expect OBGYN to be said “ob-gine”, but it isn’t. Are there any other abbreviations that are pronounced as if they were initialisms, and is there a word for them? Does anyone know anything about how it came to be?

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:10:41 +0000

NB, on jejunery, and Amis, the link with French is there, but only in parallel. Jejune comes from the Latin ‘to fast’ [go hungry, hence weak and insipid], as does the French jeuner, which gives dejeuner, ‘break-fast’ [now used for lunch, because people didn’t used to eat much in the mornings…]

Fun with etymology, eh?

By: tarylcabot

tarylcabot — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:22:45 +0000

Literally, i can state that i’ve only heard the predominant usage of the phrase ‘begging the question’ – avoiding answering so the question still needs to be asked. did not know there was another meaning and have never heard anyone employing the petitio principii usage. Seems to be strictly a blog deconstruction.