More on "More Ear-itating Word Abuse"
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Last month we reran More Ear-itating Word Abuse by our late writer Tom Stern. The article first appeared in August 2013. We heard from many readers, and their comments were just about evenly split between:
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For years I've hated hearing people mispronounce these words. Thank you for shining a spotlight on this subject. |
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You are stuck in place while the language is evolving. You are prescriptivists when it is descriptivists who evolve and survive. |
For those unfamiliar with such terms, prescriptivists are those who prescribe what they think is right, generally based on past practice and acceptance, and descriptivists are those who observe the world and describe what people are doing in current practice.
Tom Stern liked to portray himself as a language curmudgeon (he also sometimes called himself a fussbudget), but what he really enjoyed was stirring the pot, taking a defensible position, and then getting people to think about how they are using language.
Are we at GrammarBook.com prescriptivists? We've certainly been accused of it, especially when we write things like "Dour The correct pronunciation is 'doo-er.' " But we've also been abandoned by readers who think we've betrayed their bent toward prescriptivism when we insist that as well as who can be used as a pronoun to describe people (Old Superstitions Die Hard). Moreover, some readers have disapproved of our acceptance of the singular they in certain circumstances (more on that in upcoming newsletters).
We like to think of ourselves as neutral, somewhere close to half-way between prescriptivism and descriptivism. Okay, well, maybe the truth is we are a bit more on the side of prescriptivism, and we might be more comfortable with the term traditionalists. We are, however, willing to revisit certain positions and loosen the leash a bit when facts and circumstances support doing so:
Dour The traditional pronunciation is "doo-er." A standard variant that is now commonly heard is "dower."
Forte (meaning "strength" or "talent") The traditionally preferred pronunciation is "fort." American English has now tilted toward for-tay (also see More on Misspoken or Mispronounced Words and Phrases).
Schism The traditional pronunciation is "sizzum." However, "skizzum" is rapidly gaining ground.
Short-lived Because the compound is derived from the noun life rather than the verb live, it is etymologically correct to use a long i. However, the short i pronunciation is now commonly acceptable.
Where we won't budge is in the area of fad or vogue words and terms that transition from fresh and edgy to stale and tedious due to manic overuse. One such term that has been hanging around irritating us language fussbudgets is "very unique." To be unique is to be "one of a kind," not to be unusual. How can something be "very one of a kind"? We draw the line at accepting usages that diminish the power and value of a word that was perfectly good to begin with.
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