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Pooh-Bah
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She said she believes that the Pericue, who for unknown reasons went extinct in the 18th century, ...
For some reason, this construction offends my ears. I would have used "became" in place of "went".
What's your opinion?
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old hand
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I find the use of "went" here very unbecoming.
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Pooh-Bah
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Well it's better than "up and died."
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Using the verb to go would seem to imply a willful ation on the part of the Pericue that to become avoids. Perhaps therein lies your dicomfort.
I would have thought that usage a Britishism.
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Pooh-Bah
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to imply a willful ation on the part of the Pericue Sorry, Faldage - I don't follow your meaning. Also, which do you think is the Britishism? I believe that most of my fellow-countrypeople would opt for "become" rather than "went" (excluding the vast majority, who would almost certainly prefer Alex's version!  )
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To me, to go extinct (the one which seems to me, however mistakenly on my part, to be the Britishism) would imply the Pericue had exerted some effort. The verb is active. To become extinct implies a passivity inherent in the passive construction; the Pericue became extinct through no effort of its own.
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Pooh-Bah
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'...have been extinct since the eighteenth century' is the form that sits most comfortably with me.
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old hand
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to go extinct..would imply the Pericue had exerted some effortHere I respectfully, yet strongly disagree: If someone goes mad, you would certainly not suspect a willful act, or would you?  The question is interesting for me, because in many texts which are nearly perfectly translated from German into English, become is improperly used. (possible alternatives to consider: turned, grew..)
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in many texts which are nearly perfectly translated from German into English, become is improperly used
Well, if you're going to have a periphrastic future in werden..
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old hand
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periphrastic future in werden
Actually, I was not thinking of this type of - rather gross - error, but another habit of writing e.g. "..when he made this remark, she became red.." instead of .."turned red", or "blushed".
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"To me, to go extinct (the one which seems to me, however mistakenly on my part, to be the Britishism) "
Somehow I associate it more with Australian usage, I suppose because of hearing my Aussie ex-husband refer to something or someone as having "gone missing". I also heard people in Australia say someone "went walkabout", specifically a pet that had wandered off.
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"gone missing"
That's the example I was trying to think of. I've heard it from UKns.
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I thought it started with the Young Man from Kent.
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"gone missing"Yep, that's the one I was thinking of, too. Which totally invalidates your point of intention, Mr. F. 
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totally invalidates your point of intention
A) The usage was cited as evidence of it as a British usage.
2) I never intended to claim the go/become difference indicated a hard and fast rule, merely a tendency.
Þ) Someone who has gone missing may well have done so intentionally; certainly moreso than something that has turned up missing.
Thank you very much Ms. S.
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Bless you for bringing this up, Rhuby! My foremost linguistic peeve of late. In fact, I had prepared an alpha-post about this some time ago which I discussed with AnnaS, but was distracted and never posted it. What really made me hit the fan was when a publication of the calibre of Archaeology used it in an article late last year instead of the traditional became extinct/will become extinct. This after a few years of being inundated here in the media with gone missing, go missing, and went missing. There are several other like usages that have been similarly changed, but I'd have to find that old handwritten notesheet I made. So does anyone have any idea when this started, where, and why? It was suggested that it was Britishism, but this thread seems to refute that. The other suggestion is "media expedience"...saves words. But it has always sounded awkward to me. I don't like it, and never will. I think this appeared just a few years ago, 5-7 perhaps, but it seems to have taken hold.
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BTW, this started with gone, went, go missing in the broadcast media here, and then spread to the others. That usage coupled with extinct in Archaeology was the first time I ever heard it attached to extinct, which I found especially annoying...in fact, it made my paleontological bones curdle.
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Pooh-Bah
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Do bones have a curdl osity that varies according to the stimulus?
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foremost linguistic peeve
Ah, to be so free of people growing businesses, waitron units telling us to enjoy without having the common courtesy to tell us what it is we are supposed to enjoy, and people going nucular over things of much greater import.
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Thank you very much Ms. S.De nada, I guess. Who's Ms. S??
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So are we soon to be saying go engaged, went engaged, and gone engaged? How romantic.
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go engaged
Close. Take the n from reinyartnation, plosivate it and devoice it into a t and stick it in there and you get got engaged.
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Close. Take the n from reinyartnation, plosivate it and devoice it into a t and stick it in there and you get got engaged.Hey! This is Q & A...I'm attempting a serious word discussion here! Plosivate schmlosivate.
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Pooh-Bah
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become/will become extinct
Assume, if you will, that the Perlicue decided to become extinct, and therefore went extinct (consider this a direction rather like "east" or "west" or "up" or "down"). Given this, it could come back from the extinct at any time it chooses. Consider the conversation it could subsequently have at a Friday night cocktail hour:
"Oh, yes, we all went extinct a couple of hundred years ago, but damn it all, the cost of housing and land taxes just absolutely went through the ceiling, dahlink. Coming back unextinct was the only economically sensible option. And we've discovered that nothing much has changed. Except the gin went dearer, of course!"
This is, you will realise, at least three very wet martinis into the party ...
- Pfranz
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It's a juan way road, Pfranz
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I was reading an article on some folks who are attempting to trace LOTR to myths of old storytelling (I'll start another threaf for that in Misc.), and encountered this gem of misuse, IMO, using went missing now in a military casualty sense? C'mon, now that's really taking it over the cliff. It's missing-in-action or "killed, wound, and/or missing"...but "killed, wounded, and/or went missing"...what! I hate it! Here's the context (I'm including the second paragraph for the sake of clarity for LOTR aficionados):
>They also linked Tolkien's sword-and-sorcery classic to the Civil War battle of Antietam while visiting the battlefield during the weeklong seminar. More than 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or went missing there in the bloodiest, single-day clash of the war.
"We thought the connection was that, just as the Tolkien book is about the great battle, this is the place of the one-day, great battle in North America," Wilhelm said. "With the Civil War, there's a kind of sacred aura about it. A lot of lives were lost, a lot of passion was put into it." <
What thinkest the board?
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During the Civil War a lot of soldiers went missing. It was also called deserting or skedaddling.
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No, Faldage...there was always a small percentage of desertion in any battle, but in the standard battle casualty designations of "killed, wounded, and/or missing" missing refers to those killed without ID, disfigured beyond recognition without any identifying papers, and, sadly, large numbers simply blown to bits, disintergrated or rendered into red mist by grape shot and cannister. Thousands of men were missing-in-action after the vast open-field engagement of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. This term has been carried through in warfare to this day. It's not a desertion stat. "Went missing" in this case is just flat wrong and abhorrent to the ear.
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The use of "went missing" - to me anyway - says that the reason for a person's being missing is unknown as in any one of the circumstances you stated above and also includes a soldier's being concussed and simply wandering off in a daze/haze. A kind of battle amnesia? I would infer there is a slight - very slight - chance the soldier might turn up later(possibly with a head wound)with no memory of where he had been or what he had done.
As to "went extinct" I would infer that the reason for extinction is unknown : loss of habitat; killed by predators; drought, etc.
We do seem to get our dainties all in a twist when the language changes, don't we? I have several peeves but I've learned to shrug them off when encounterd because some are transitory and sanity soon returns. As for those that take root .... well what can one do ? (Sigh)
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The author of the example you listed wouldn't be a Britspeaker by any chance, Juan? They say funny things like that sometimes
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Yeahbut®, this was offered in conjunction with the battle casualty stat of 23,000 killed, wounded, or missing.
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No, Faldage...
Geez, Juan, I was just being a wiseass. I agree with consuelo that the writer was maybe a Brit. They do tend to use that expression.
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Gotcha, Faldage...I figured you had to know that, but. Ten Four, good buddy. sometimes, late at night without an emoticon to light the way the inflection can be misconstured, as it were. FWIW, I took consuelo's remark as a defense of the writer, too.  Yes, as AnnaS so aptly pointed out for us somewhere, it was started across the pond as a Britishism. And they can have full credit for it.
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Pooh-Bah
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Yes, "went missing" is a common enough term over here in Britland: so much so that it no longer grates on my ear as does "went extinct".
But the same charge can be levelled at the former as at the latter.
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Pooh-Bah
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Ahem.
‘Went missing’ has been used in the UK for many years as a rueful way of suggesting that something has been stolen or ‘ferreted away’ somewhere (the anthrax went missing sometime during the last ten years). Occasionally this may be applied to an individual who has disappeared but strictly that should only be if the disappearence was deliberate, probably for tactical or strategic reasons on the domestic or legal fronts (John went missing for a week after his contretemps with Sally and June). Its present usage would not include the sense of missing in action.
I tried Googling the expression and none of the instances I found where it had been used for ‘missing in action’ were on sites from the UK – not that this means anything, I’m just saying…
There are many sites that, irritatingly, assume you know their place of origin when in fact it takes some detective work to discover it, through spelling habits or chance references. This really struck home a couple of days back when a post from WW about pitcher plants had me clicking through various sites that all used terms such as ‘native’ or ‘one of our few insectivorous plants’ without specifically identifying the country of origin.
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So, then, do the folks who take the use of this aberration to missing-in-action, as well, also have to change MIA to WMIA? On a semantic note...when I used abhorrent before I actually meant aberrant...but since something abhorrent can be strongly aberrant, I guess it's subconsciously connected.
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Here's a random thought:
Could it be that we are more comfortable with the usage of 'went/go', when referring to the singular, and use 'became', when referring to a group.
That might explain 'go mad' and 'became extinct'. Am too tired to think of anymore such examples as a buttress. Does this train of thought strike a chord with anyone else?
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