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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094 |
variant -- "We saw Beethoven last night."
What'd you do, exhume him?
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
What'd you do, exhume him? Please! 
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891 |
I think they rolled him over [walkin away whistling emoticon]
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
What was brown, and found on the piano bench?
Beethoven's last movement.
[ready for the onslaught emoticon]
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
... and the smell that's lingering is Jackie decomposing ...
[ready for my own funeral emoticon]
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
["ahem" e] Mav, Helen of Troy brought this up over in the icon thread, but want to make sure you (and all other interested folks, which is probably the large majority of y'all) see it: the April issue of Harper's magazine carries an essay by David Foster Wallace called "Tense Present: Democracy, English and the Wars Over Usage." Indeed, as Helen mentioned, it is lengthy and footnote-filled (which the magazine points out with glee) but it looks like some juicy reading. The essay's hook is Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (Oxford Univ. Press), which I haven't seen yet but plan on finding. Wallace warns us that offering counsel on the finer points of U.S. English is Preaching to the Choir (i.e. nobody's gonna be interested except those of us who read William Safire's column on language in the Sunday NYTimes magazine, for example) but oh, well, noblesse oblige, I guess. Can you get Harper's over there in the Old Country? 
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
No chance of my seeing the essay unless it's online, but Garner's work did get a review by Tom McArthur in English Today for October 1999, and then a reply to the review from Garner in the October 2000 issue (it's a quarterly by the way, so the gap isn't as large as it might seem).
Bingley
Bingley
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
"..exhume him?"
If the string that followed this was the awful one I think it was, I would like to say for the record that I did not give the idiotic usage as an example of what *I* would say or ever have, but as a something I'd heard often enough along the way to make me numb or vomit, depending on my then current state of wellness.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 137
member
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member
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 137 |
Just to be difficult and prove myself a member of the crowd Ayleu. I'd have to say I'd say "You've finally arrived". I wouldn't say have but I'd definetely have the 've in there.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
I bought the magazine yestereve and took it in with me to my standard Thursday bar restaurant. I got about two pages in to the article and had to leave because I was frightening the other customers and the hired help with my constant guffawing. Just a sample. The author claims to be a SNOOT from a family of SNOOTs (approximately 70% of his family claim the label). SNOOT may be interpreted as either Sprachgefühl Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance or Syntax Nudniks Of Our Time depending on whether or not the interpreter is a SNOOT.
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