Asalt on Language Slugs


Once again the assault on the English language has reached a point where someone has to say something. I volunteer. The attack is not aimed at your typical everyday goof, or uneducated workman who is too busy actually doing something to worry about the niceties of linguistic competence. Rather, these shots are provoked by profoundly disturbing patterns of illiteracy that have infected those what oughta know better. This time the focus is not on the mispronounciators of the Nucyular PhD’s club, but the Illuminous Illiterati who fancy non-existent words when they aren’t busy misusing real ones.

Supposably is, assumably, something the Illiterati say when they mean supposedly. This is, I guess, the new irregardless. It’s not quite as colorfully bad. Irregardless, if it were a word, would mean the opposite of what the speaker would usually intend, i.e. without a lack of regard. “I said I would stick it out, irregardless of the cost. And I ain’t payin’ a penny more”. Supposably does not even have the redundant value of the double negative. Anything is “able” to be supposed, so the word is pretty much meaningless as a descriptive aid, like “imaginable”. Maybe it’s a confusion with presumably, but it seems less than presumable that the population so confused would be familiar with that word. Kind of like assuming that people who call dolphins fish are confusing the marine mammal with the little fishes of the same name. Shore they are.

A current phenomenon is a phenomena. As in, “The popularity of Obama is an amazing phenomena”, and, “Mass hysteria is a phenomena that has fascinated mankind for centuries”. But, to balance things out, “Most of the phenomenon we are seeing this election season are the same as always.” (Here I’m focusing on one homicide amidst that massacre). One is a phenomenon, more are phenomena. What in the world is hard about that? The problem with singulars and plurals seems to keep getting worse. The average Starbuck’s sipper never knew his one data from the pile, created the single criteria for discerning that from many, and now doesn’t know an incident, from an incidence, or incidences, from incidentses. In this cases the rule are two confusing, I guess.

“On” is not the all-purpose preposition. “I would like information on flaying”, or, “I don’t know the details on the rules of language”, “Good luck on that”, are cloddish plops heard more than stepped in, but just barely. One might like information about flaying or some other subject, or not be aware of rules or detail regarding something etc. In fact, the whole thing that makes it information is that it is specifically about something. Coffee and spaghetti sauce stains are probably “on” it, and that helps not at all. The point is there is a whole dusty vocabulary of prepositions out there that don’t get used when they should, and some get used when none is even needed. Do we all get it on that?

“Of” is a similar favorite of slugs with voice boxes. Of course there is the ancient crime of, “I should of done it differently”, which shows up with amazing frequency even in print. Commercials tell us you can get a hundred thousand dollars of life insurance. Really? Can I get five dollars of donuts and a dollar of coffee with my fifty cents of newspaper? Is sticking the word worth in front of the of too expensive of their money? Dollars, after all, are a unit of currency, not of insurances.

Now, some down and dirty diatribes:

The guy behind the mirrors in the supermarket meat section is not a butcher, he is a meat cutter. Butchers kill animals and gut them. That is pretty much mechanized now, but there are some good old-style hackers out there. Just for comparison, a mortician is not a murderer. At least not automatically.

A snake expert is a herpetologist, but it does not necessarily work the other way around. A lizard, turtle, or tuatara expert is a herpetologist too, as is any expert on reptiles generally. Just FYI, an ophiologist is, specifically, an expert on snakes. So if that’s what you mean, you should probably just say it.

In American any old member of a parliament—let alone a legislature which is really not a parliament—is not a parliamentarian. This, despite Webster’s weak knees. A parliamentarian is an expert in parliamentary procedure, not just any-old member of an elected body. Normally a member of such a body will be designated the parliamentarian, or in some cases one will be hired form outside. To use the term to refer to any suit filling a seat is an insult to true masters of parliamentary procedure which is, in a word, complex and in a phrase migraine-inducingly horrid. Robert’s Rules of Order makes the UCC look like instructions for Shoots n’ Ladders. The Brits and Cannucks disagree and use parliamentarian for their MPs. The British also think that fruitcake is pudding, fries are chips, chips are crisps, and Slim Whitman was a genius. The Canadians think Canada is a country and Quebec is loyal. Need I say more?

Any lawyer or layman who happens appointedly or electorally into a judgeship is not a jurist. A jurist is, rather, a well-respected expert on the law or at least some aspect of it. While the title has no official qualifications- the "democratic" character of the American legal profession prevents many enforceable relevant standards at all (somethings probably should have been kept while the crown got tossed)it demeans the likes of John Roberts when his fellow "jurist", The Honorable Lenny Brattmold of the Machallocany County Probate Court, let alone Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th circuit's Pluto extension office, is so mentioned.


When did a piece of statistical information become "a statistic"? It didn’t. Despite what the lexicographical fifth-column at Webster’s say. In fact, a so-called statistic is most often a datum; a word singular in two ways and rarely used even once. For comparison, an equation is not a mathematic and economic is not a noun for which economics is the plural. Time now to return to the New Ostrogoths’ descent on civilization. It is a politic.