l0l Words That College-bound Students Should Be Able to Spell

Parent Cafe
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<p>While browsing, I am reminded that you may also count me among those who loathe “impact” as a verb. </p>

<p>Meanwhile: <a href=“http://www.ducts.org/12_03/html/reviews/ravetz.htm[/url]”>http://www.ducts.org/12_03/html/reviews/ravetz.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Words do accrue new meanings in time, and change is natural when the new meanings are cognates of earlier ones or are metaphorically related to them. We have seen this in Eliot’s use of “overwhelming,” whose present sense is clearly derived from previous senses. Perusing (which is not skimming or scanning) the OED or [Merriam-] Webster’s New international Dictionary , Second Edition evinces the point. What descriptivists fail to appreciate, it seems, is that word-growth resembles and is part of human-growth: it should be guided by caring adults who wish, by precept and practice, to help shape healthy, responsive and responsible lives (word or human). Too readily to condone or approve verbal corruption and irresponsibility is to invite correspondingly dissolute or diminished thinking, feeling and behaving.
Emphasis mine.</p>

<p>As standards have steadily loosened, instances of verbal sloppiness, catachreses and solecisms seem to be proliferating at a geometric rate. They appear not only in casual speech, where it is somewhat more pardonable, but also in the formal address of lawyers in courtrooms and elected officials in Congress, in newspapers, magazines, books, and in the copy read by television newscasters – alas, the source on which a majority of Americans most depend for their knowledge of current events. Among the common abuses are: Between you and I. Ten items or less. The reason is because. My family and myself. Ironic for coincidental or paradoxical. Merge together. Self-confessed. Mingle or mix together. Future plans. Free gift. Surrounded on all sides. Throughout the entire. Misrepresent for lie. At this point in time. Fulsome for robust or generous. Visible to the eye. Data as singular, media as singular, phenomena and graffiti as singular. Tragedy or tragic for something that may be exceedingly sad or unfortunate. Postmodern. To impact. To critique. To mentor. To e-mail. Prioritize. Notorious for celebrated, well-known or famous. Fortuitous for fortunate. Disinterested/uninterested. Imply/infer. Anxious/eager. Masterly/masterful. Further/farther. Quote/quotation. Nauseous/nauseated. Transpire for occur. From whence. Indicated for said. Precise estimate.</p>

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<p>English is rich in near-synonyms, and the ability to chose intelligently from among, say, inextirpable , inexpungable, inextinguishable, ineradicable, impregnable, indestructible, and inviolable or, say, skinny, emaciated, cadaverous, skeletal, slender, spindly, and wizened allows us to clarify and refine what we say, think and feel – that is, our identities – to give them and us greater value, nuance, subtlety and individuality.</p>

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<p>Forty or more years ago, when academic standards were consistently higher, reflecting a less heterogeneous culture for which something resembling a classical education was still a common goal of unquestioned importance, it was possible to speak of a language war between descriptivists and prescriptivists.</p>

<p>The publication of the Third Edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary (Unabridged) in 1961 marks a cultural watershed: its appearance revealed a great deal about the changes in our culture since the publication in 1934 of the great Second Edition of Webster’s. *The salient difference between the editions is that Webster’s Third accepts as standard English most of the words to which Webster’s Second attached warning labels: slang, colloquial, erroneous, incorrect, illiterate. Comment:*Indeed, the loss of such labels in dictionaries is not a good thing.</p>

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<p>My pet peeve: people who say disinterested when they mean uninterested.</p>

<p>Correct usage:</p>

<p>Disinterested = impartial or having no stake in the outcome.</p>

<p>Uninterested = bored or not interested.</p>

<p>When there is a big play at the plate, a baseball umpire had better be a disinterested observer. But he had better <em>not</em> be an uninterested observer.</p>

123

<p>Good one, Coureur.</p>

<p>Meanwhile:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.sussex.ac.uk/philosophy/1-3-12-4.html[/url]”>http://www.sussex.ac.uk/philosophy/1-3-12-4.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>vocabulary</p>

<p>It is very common for students to choose the wrong item of vocabulary to express what they want to say. This is nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to worry about so long as one is aware of the problem and tries to tackle it: it is a phase everyone goes through. The best way to improve one’s sense of the appropriate word is to pay close attention to the choice of words in good writers, and consult lists (there is one in The Oxford Dictionary and English Usage Guide) of words which are commonly confused or misused. Here are some examples which have come to our attention:</p>

<p>[snip]</p>

<p>Transpire</p>

<p>To transpire means to become known. It does not mean to happen.</p>

124

<p>The one that bugs me is interchanging the words ‘implied’ and ‘inferred’ at will. </p>

<p>And I am a felon when it comes to abusing the word ‘that’. I literally have to go back over any text I compose and remove all the excess ‘thats’. I drive myself crazy with that one.</p>

125

<p>Transpire is another unfortunate example of a word that is changing/has changed in meaning due to constant misuse. Some other sad examples:</p>

<p>Effete - means worn out or sterile, not effeminate.
Parameter - means a variable in a system, not a limit or boundary.
Fulsome - means praise so effusive as to be insulting, not full or abundant.
Gender - does not mean the same as sex. Sex = male or female. Gender = masculine or feminine (or neuter).</p>

<p>Pushing back against the tides of word misuse is about as effective in the long run as pushing back against the ocean tides. (Sigh)</p>

126

<p>I have a spelling horror story. </p>

<p>When S1 was a rising sophomore in h.s., I wrote a note to the principal complaining about a vaguely written policy in the handbook and how advice about scheduling certain classes could be different, and thus unfair and confusing, depending on which counselor you had consulted. “The advice from counselors should not be so unscrutable,” I wrote in a huff, and sent the email immediately without catching the typo. </p>

<p>Well, maybe he wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the pack — blue of eye and dim of bulb as someone once said — but he read that word as “unscrupulous” and fired back an angry message defending the “integrity” of the counselors on his staff. I was backpedaling furiously to assure him that what I was complaining about confusing, hard-to-decipher advice, not dastardly, amoral advice. :o So kids, remember that spelling matters!</p>

127

<p>Coureur, of course you are correct. And yet as a member of the Praetorian guard, I must do my duty until the walls are overrun, at which point we fall back in good order, form up ranks, and start all over again. </p>

<p>Though sometimes it feels more like Roarke’s Drift.</p>

128

<p>I’ve read through this whole thing and have not seen my top two peeves:</p>

<p>Should of, instead of should have. Along with could of, would of, etc.</p>

<p>I seen instead of I have seen, or I saw. My college roommate used to say that and it annoys me to this day.</p>

<p>In the Michigan Daily, the student editor wrote “First Off”, instead of “In the First Place.” It just sounds so wrong.</p>

129

<p>When it comes to words incorrectly used as singular terms but written in the plural, one that I particularly dislike is criteria as in “my chief criteria is.”</p>

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<p>All you language mavens might enjoy reading The Power of Babel: A natural history of language by John McWhorter. It’s all about how languages evolve including some of the reasons why English is particularly prone to a growing vocabularu coupled with a simplified grammar.</p>

131

<p>orientate and orientated – Hearing either one makes me want to jump up in the middle of a meeting, cover my ears, and run down the hall screaming hysterically that I just can’t stand it.</p>

132

<p>3bm103, according my English teacher it should always be should have, could have, would have, etc. not should of, could of, would of. According to her, “should have” is correct grammatically but when people are speaking, over time as they said should have more quickly it started sounding like “should of”. Anyone have an idea on which is right? (lol I think my whole post is filled with grammatical errors but whatever :D)</p>

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<p>Pyar:</p>

<p>“Should of” is NEVER correct. It is a lazy person’s way of avoiding to aspire the h.</p>

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<p>Perhaps the most common example of this error is bacteria. Singular is bacterium. A reverse example is kudos - a Greek word which is already singular and leads to the coining of the false singular of “kudo.” The proper plural of kudos is kudoi.</p>

135

<p>One of my colleagues recently shared a cute one: one of her students wrote about having never felt like he was part of the krem della krem in our school.</p>

136

<p>Some of you guys might like this piece about word misuse. Bonus, it references the SATs: </p>

<p><a href=“http://blog.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2007/01/awash_in_sat_words.html[/url]”>http://blog.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2007/01/awash_in_sat_words.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

137

<p>How about this one:</p>

<p>emigrate is the verb</p>

<p>immigrant is the noun</p>

<p>You do not immigrate from another country
and you are not an emigrant</p>

138

<p>I thought you immigrate to a country and emigrate from a country. I could have that backwards. Either way I think immigrate can be a verb, you just have to use it going the right way.</p>

139

<p>^ I thought so, too. For example, I emigrated from Sweden and immigrated to the US. :)</p>

140

<p>I believe on can speak of an emigrant: “He was an emigrant to Hungary in 1642.” You could also say “He immigrated to Hungary in 1642.” </p>

<p>The difference? Auctorial point of view.</p>

<p>In either case you could say he was an emigre of whatever nationality pertained. And possibly an eminence gris as well, though as it stands we have insufficient information.</p>