Grammar that makes you cringe

[Andrij]

NYT on Francis's late encyclical reported him as saying that global warming results in people being dislocated. Makes a change from the old method with a horse at each corner.

As the encyclical would have been initially promulgated in Latin, is the NYT quoting from an official English translation?

[pcolbeck]

Gifted is horrible and confusing. Consider:

The girl was gifted.

Does this mean the girl had a special talent or someone gave her away? Are we talking about slavery or a concert pianist?

[Peter]

The trail for some programme coming up on the BBC Radio 4

Some scientist, in awe-struck voice

 "Chimpanzees and human beings are ten times more similar than a mouse is from a rat." 

No, she was not using English as a second language.  I'll give her the benefit of nerves, otherwise marking her thesis becomes unimaginable.

[Pickled Onion]

"To gift" has become overused recently, and it often sounds a bit silly or unnecessary. However, it's very useful if you need to show that something was given permanently and without recompense. If you just "give" something to someone, you might just be passing it to them.

[red marley]

I vote for using a more English alternative to "to gift". How about "to present", with the stress on the first syllable. That should clear things up.

[T42]

I reckon you can use any word you like as a verb as long as it's comprehensible, not excruciating, and not pompously overblown (as in "gifted").

Once you removed words that fall into one of these categories, though, that doesn't leave many   Albeit that the overblownity or excruciatitude is entirely subjective.

"Gifted" might work in a discussion between Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker about a particularly feeble piece of defending resulting in the simplest of tap-in goals, but not in most circumstances descibed in this thread.  Trousering has been around for yonks and to me has conveyed the meaning than the sum of money trousered is rather more than just small change, which would be pocketed instead.

I have visions of a poacher hiding a salmon or two, as in that lovely poem "Poaching in Excelsis".

[Cudzoziemiec]

I vote for using a more English alternative to "to gift". How about "to present", with the stress on the first syllable. That should clear things up.

Excellent! To receive a present then becomes "to absent". The people involved are then the "presenter" and the "absenter". Alternatively, the person who has something "presented" to them becomes the "presentee" with the one who no longer has it being the "absentee". People who object to this are "dissenters".

[Wowbagger]

Presently = like a present.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Absently = like absinthe. Barman, over here please! (Da-na-na-na-na Barman! The coked crusader!)

[Mr Larrington]

Absently = like absinthe. Barman, over here please! (Da-na-na-na-na Barman! The coked crusader!)

Makes the heart grow fonder.

(dies)

[mcshroom]

Is it true that there is only one lake in the Lake District?

Yep, Bassenthwaite Lake. There's also one Moss. All the others are Meres, Waters or Tarns

[Zipperhead]

Makes the heart grow fonder.

(dies)

I heard the punchline as  "makes the farts go Honda"

[Mr Larrington]

That's not a nice thing to call Ron Dennis!

[T42]

Makes the tart grow fonder (Dowson).

Me own outing of offgepissedness this unfair morn is with ignorami who use velocity and speed interchangeably.  "It's growing at an incredible velocity" of a quasi-spherical object is a load of Beaux Locks.


BTW, what pisses me off about living abroad is that if I make an error in French I'm an ignorant furriner whereas if they make an error it's a typo.

[Wowbagger]

Whereas here on YACF we make allowances for you in both respects. 

[Tim Hall]

I saw a temporary  sign in a supermarket yesterday, explaining that due to a technical fault "sandwiche's, toastie's and panini's" were not available. This had been hand corrected by biro, scribbling out the offending apostrophes, as is often the case. As a bonus, the terminal "s" on "panini's " was also obliterated, as panini is already a plural. Waitrose customers FTW.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Panini as a plural sounds fine, but then what's the singular? Panino? That sounds odd in English.

[Tim Hall]

Panini as a plural sounds fine, but then what's the singular? Panino? That sounds odd in English.

Si. Italian innit.  Of course there's a whole other argument that if one is speaking English then English plural forms should be used, so perhaps it should be panino and paninos.  See also stadium and stadia.

[Bledlow]

I vote for using a more English alternative to "to gift". How about "to present", with the stress on the first syllable. That should clear things up.

You mean "to give", don't you? 

[Bledlow]

In my view, a sentence using "favorite" as a verb is already clunky and inelegant - and American.  However, I can see you are in a difficult editorial position if you are going to use articles which contain internet-speak.

I don't see it as a difficulty. Many nouns become verbs through common use and eventually take hold in more formal language despite resistance.

Ask yourself this: are you resisting the usage on strong grammatical grounds, or simply because it's a neologism?

Neologisms are inevitable in a developing language, which English is.  However, I don't think that means that because a neologism exists that I am required to approve of it.  And that is not Luddite but love of a language I feel is usually perfectly adequate already for most purposes; not only adequate but beautiful.  "Favorite" isn't even English, but even if it was, its use is a distortion: how can you have any number of favo(u)rites?  (I must confess I'm only making an assumption about how it is used, as I don't use FB, twitter and so on.)

But my original post just said I find it clunky and inelegant.  I'm perfectly happy with that!

+1 

[citoyen]

You lot are as bad as Michael Gove...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33223503

[Cudzoziemiec]

Gove is a rank amateur. We wouldn't even let him on the forum.

[citoyen]

I should hope not.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Panini as a plural sounds fine, but then what's the singular? Panino? That sounds odd in English.

Si. Italian innit.  Of course there's a whole other argument that if one is speaking English then English plural forms should be used, so perhaps it should be panino and paninos.  See also stadium and stadia.

Perhaps it "should" be paninos but it isn't. There's quite a tradition in English of borrowing foreign plurals and using them as either singular or uncountable. Quite a lot of them are Italian food items, in fact: spaghetti, macaroni. Russian seems to be another good source. At a guess it's because the formation of plurals in those languages is so different from the way we do it in English.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Anyway, here's one my son brought home from his not-yet secondary school:

Students will be ready to leave at 12:00pm, please make sure your son / daughter are being collected from [street].