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message 51:
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Boreal Elizabeth
(last edited Aug 18, 2008 08:26PM)
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Aug 18, 2008 08:25PM
sacrilege!
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I'm with you Deb. Played on 'special' turf here in Malaysia. Which looks like... grass. But costs the earth. Sigh - Malaysian priorities, and what they do with the taxpayers money...Nationalism is a bit of plague. Nothing like a watching the national football team getting thrashed by the national team of God-knows-where on home ground to bring out sterling nationalistic emotions of all Malaysians.
Loath or Loathe? Loath is an adjective meaning "unwilling." It ends with a hard th and rhymes with growth or both.
Loathe is a verb meaning "to hate intensely." It ends with a soft th like the sound in smooth or breathe.
Examples: He was loath to admit that he was included in the deal.
(He was unwilling)
Alex loathes spiders.
(Hates them intensely)
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The pre-Colombian ball game was said to have ended, sometimes, with the sacrifice of the losing team. You lose so many good players that way.
by the by neis that twain playing pool with a baseball
an apple
and a jar of baby food?
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[All of you educators and lovers of proper Englishwill appreciate this story.:]
On his 74th birthday,a man received a gift certificate
from his wife. The certificate paid for a visit to a
medicine man living on a nearby reservation. The
medicine man was rumored to have a wonderful cure for
erectile dysfunction.
After being persuaded,he drove to the reservation,
handed his ticket to the medicine man, all the time
wondering what was to come.
The old medicine man slowly and methodically produced
a potion,which he handed to the 74 year-old. With a
grip on his shoulder,the medicine man warned, "This
is powerful medicine and it must be respected. You take
only a teaspoonful and then say '1-2-3'.. When you do
that,you will become manlier than you have ever been
in your life and you will be able to perform as long
as you want."
The old man was encouraged. As he walked away,he turned
and asked,"How do I stop the medicine from working?"
"Your partner must say '1-2-3-4,'"the medicine man responded.
"But when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon."
The old man was very eager to see if the potion worked,
so he went home,showered,shaved,took a spoonful of the
medicine,and then invited his wife to join him in the bedroom.
When she came in,he took off his clothes and said,"1-2-3!"
Immediately,he was the manliest of men.
His wife was excited and began throwing off her clothes.
And then she asked, "What was the 1-2-3 for?"
And that, boys and girls,is why we should never end our
sentences with a preposition - or one will end up with a
dangling participle!
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How about a BAN on all drug advertising on TV? Where do I sign? It speaks loads about us as a country (on meds).
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Ahem. Where was I? Ah, yes. Debs, you should see! At least 70% of our ads are drugs -- many of them of the embarrassing sort (erectile dysfunction, enlarged prostate, hemorrhoids, etc.).
What's a real hoot is how they read aloud the fine print about possible side effects -- these take up 1/3rd of the commercial and often include "possible death" and other such nuisances.
"How about a BAN on all drug advertising on TV? Where do I sign? It speaks loads about us as a country (on meds)"GREAT IDEA!...I'm so sick of hearing that I NEED to ask my Dr. about sleep meds, indigestion, bone density, cholesterol, and ED!(etc!!)
Geezzzzzzz...I feel fine!
YES!....one of my pet peeves gets the spotlight! LESS
Less (adjective)
Pronunciation: ['les:]
Definition: Not as much of something uncountable. Used with mass nouns only, as "less bread," "less thought, "less intelligence."
If the object noun is countable, "fewer" should be used: "fewer people," "fewer hours, "fewer things." "Fewer" is the comparative of "few;" "less" is the comparative of "little."
Usage: How could such a small, simple word acquire the stature of the Word of the Day? It may be small but it is muscling "fewer" out of the English language. "Less" is so commonly misused as a substitute for "fewer" on US radio and TV, that I fear for the very life of "fewer." The rule for using "fewer" is simple: if the object of "less/fewer" is countable, "fewer" is required: "fewer errors mean less anxiety." "Fewer" is the comparative of "few." If we say "a few errors," to be consistent we should say "fewer errors." "Little" is used with nouns that cannot be counted, e.g. hope, life, risk; "less" should only be used with the same nouns that "little" modifies.
Suggested Usage: Please don't complain that this word is too obvious to be the Word of the Day. I would conjecture that most U.S. English-speakers no longer use 'fewer' at all: "Little hope remains that 'judgement' will be spelled correctly in the near future but there is even less hope for the survival of 'fewer.' Sad but true: "Fewer and fewer people use 'fewer' and no one listens to the few who do."
Etymology: From Old Germanic *laisiz, which turned up in Old English as læssa "less." It can be traced to very few languages outside the Germanic ones, though the Oxford English Dictionary mentions an old Lithuanian word, lësas "small." "Least" is, of course, "less" with the superlative suffix -est
Mod
Still a few holes in my argument, though.
Yeah, really doesn't completely hold water
That is all well and good, I think I am good to let go of a few words of less usage.I hear so many people saying good when they mean well.
Even in some editions of books there are misspelled words, I thought that was an editor's job. I find it to be more prevalent in the books I get from the libraries.
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Isn't it illegal to bare children these days?
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http://www.hulu.com/watch/73360/satur...
It sounds like there might be some Lynne Truss fans in here. My mum's an English teacher and the year Eats, Shoots and Leaves came out everyone had a copy in their stocking. Susanne, Gabi, I feel your pain. I've been told it's not polite to tell people off publicly so I just froth at the mouth a little and mutter to myself.On a slight tangent, I work for a magazine publisher and we just unleashed a (whatever the collective noun for journalists is) of print journalists on to the internet with quite embarrassing results. Letting a group of people who have relied on editors tidying up their work for years publish stuff directly just doesn't work. Some of them weren't even using punctuation, and I don't mean missing the odd comma, they weren't using any punctuation.
Wow ! I thought I was bad. I try to punctuate accordingly, but to have a job in which; you need to be accurate, and are not, Wow!
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Hmm,everyone wants to be Faulkner,or just lazy
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I do like Faulkner, maybe because I find punctuation soooooooooo boring.
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Rob wrote: ..."Some of them weren't even using punctuation, and I don't mean missing the odd comma, they weren't using any punctuation."Rob, like NE already noted, some of the most noted fiction writers are throwing their commas to the wind...with no boom-a-rang effects!
And they are being bestowed NOBLE prizes for Literature...i.e., Cormac McCarthy and Jose Saramago to name some names. Faulkner may have had a big influence on McCarthy me' thinks!
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Put in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said what a good boy am I.
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Jobs here are as scarce as elsewhere in the country...but have your daughter check out the newest concept by the master himself, Howard Schultz...he's trying to get back to that earlier cozy cafe feel...and has added a formidable, but affordable wine list!
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html...
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/200...
