Few things bother me more than butchery of our language, especially by people in in responsible news journalists. Reading an article today about one of KKK's (King Kwame Kilpatrick) buddy's traffic records, I encountered once again one of the dumbest and most popular incorrect phrases: "high rate of speed."
Where to begin? First, "speed" means "rate of displacement", and thus "rate of speed" means "acceleration." Everybody who ever uses this phrase always means "speed", not "acceleration." I have always fantasized about challenging a speeding ticket by getting a cop on the stand to agree that if I was traveling at a "rate of speed of zero" that I would be not guilty. Then I would ask him if I was accelerating. He would admit that he has no information about my acceleration. Then I would call my expert witness Tondle Boy to define "rate of speed" correctly.
I think that this sort of language occurs to ignorant people when they attempt to "talk fancy" in a public moment. Such people -- including 99% of reporters, lawyers, politicians, teachers, and others who lack basic linguistics educations -- in public situations usually replace the first person pronoun "me" in all cases with "I" 0r "myself", as in, "R. Kelly peed on Rick, Chris, Tim, and I -- or myself", and "Myself and Chris (or, Chris and myself) were out bird-dogging chicks and banging beaver".
Let us also take this time to berate the majority of reporters, who declare that juries found R. Kelly, Robert Blake, and OJ "innocent", when in fact "innocent" does not exist as a legal finding in our judicial system. What they mean of course is "not guilty."
It hardly needs mentioning that "irregardless" does not exist, though I still encounter this in professional settings from people with technical degrees. But even most otherwise educated people believe that "nauseous" means "nauseated", as in, "that spoiled meat made Tim nauseous". The literate among us would correctly interpret that statement to mean that the spoiled meat somehow caused Tim to make the rest of us sick, or nauseated. But that nauseous (or nauseating) meat can't make Tim nauseous, can it? It can only make him nauseated, which is to say, it nauseated him.
These same nauseous people (truly, they are) -- often reporters -- further believe that "enormity" means "large", rather than "evil." Worse, they lack a capacity to express themselves without silly nonsense phrases, like:
"The fact of the matter is..."
"It is what it is."
"To be perfectly honest..." & "Honestly..."
And a bunch of others that I will remember and exhaustively document here.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
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6 comments:
Believe it or not, I actually almost fought a ticket with that same thought process. Your disdain for cops is equal to mine. 99% of them have nothing more than 8 weeks of "police academy" as their education. Then they are let loose on our streets to enforce laws. I think that the minimum requirement for a cop should be a bachelors degree in criminal justice. If that were the requirement we would have much better (and fewer) cops that actually understood the law. Not just the cliffnotes version they get crammed down their throat at the academy. Most cops are the guys that were too dumb to make it into a university. PERIOD.
The diatribe delivered by the Hue-man is exactly what the ROER is all about! Well done!
How about treating the word "their" as singluar, as in:
The football team expressed THEIR (should be, "its") approval with a raucous round of butt slaps.
Or
Everyone should wash THEIR (should be, "his or her"m or replace "everyone" with "people") hands after auto erogenous gratification.
Sir Paul,
Your mastery of the english lanuguage is truely astounding! The high brow way in which you deliver your english education is to be commended and envied!
I agree with our Pontiff ... and your command of grammar makes me afraid to post ... certainly a transgression of poor writing skills will elicit a formal review from the Q34 - 1 ... with a possible excommunication from my own Order!?!?!
Egad!
How about abuse of "comprise" vs "compose":
1. Comprise = encompass, or embrace. An army comprises soldiers. A company comprises employees. A family comprises a father, a mom, and children.
2. There is no such thing as "is comprised by." Just think about it. People who employ this phrase reveal ignorance, and mean "comprised", or "is composed of".
3. Compose = constitute. Soldiers compose an army. Employees compose a company. A dad, mom, and kids compose a family. Shun-worthy elements of our society -- reporters, politicians, lawyers on TV -- say things like, "the Iraqi army is comprised of Sunni and Shia soldiers." The person meant to say: "The Iraqi army COMPRISES -- or is composed of -- Sunni and Shia soldiers."
4. "Is composed of" is an unnecessarily wordier way of saying "comprised". But at least this phrase conforms to logic.
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