prescriptive

Begging the Question

Niall O'Donnell 21 Comments

Writing about the etymology of the word clock yesterday reminded me of when I wrote about the word to decimate recently, and how people are fond of citing its original meaning as being to reduce by 10%, even though that’s not true.

As I said before, I can understand people having this misconception, and I can understand the instinct to correct people. There have always been people who’ve acted this way about language, but recently I’ve noticed more and more people taking such a prescriptive approach to English.

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The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Grammar

Niall O'Donnell 17 Comments

Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did

– Elton John/Bernie Taupin, “Rocket Man”

I was listening to this song on my way home from work this evening, when those lyrics struck me as somewhat peculiar. You might be able to guess that it’s the cold as hell part in particular that roused my interest. How can something be as cold as hell?

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