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What the HELL is wrong with the guy who wrote that article? I think we should put all the prescriptivists on an island and in 100 years we won't be able to understand each other any more, anyway, so they won't bother us.
"Longneck," described as "beer served in a long-necked bottle," just now made it to Webster's.
Why NOT define it? They used to serve beer in "stubbies" here, and Newfoundland beer bottles are still stubbier than their mainland counterpart. Please tell me why "longneck" isn't useful as the opposite of "stubbies".
McJob Clearly this guy has never been unforunate enought to have had to work at one, or he wouldn't diss the cleverness (or conciseness) of the term.
Headbanger Has he ever watched anyone at a hard-rock or heavy metal show? What other more erudite word would he use?
Frankenfood This one is also clever, but maybe cleverness is no longer allowed in modern day. I'm sure the people who combined such words as "twist" and "fiddle" to make "twiddle" were just as clever as the ones who coined "Frankenfoods".
gastroesophageal reflux What's wrong with this one? Enough people have it that it's talked about in common conversations. Why NOT put it in the dictionary?
I don't get what this guy's problem is. Of eleven words he discusses, I don't see any, except maybe scuzzball, that are redundant with words already in existence.
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>Of eleven words he [disses], I don't see any, except maybe scuzzball, that are redundant with words already in existence.
Bean, I think he was railing more against quality, not quantity.
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But he doesn't give any arguments for why something is an undesirable word. He just dismisses them out of hand. I don't like it when people say "I hate xxxxx" without giving me a good reason! If he can think of a more concise word than, say "McJob", with the same meaning, more power to him. But he hasn't offered any alternatives nor any reason for his scorn.
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And I think he misses the whole point of Frankenfood. I think we can safely assume that the good folks at ADM don't refer to it as Frankenfood.
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he doesn't give any arguments for why something is (an) undesirable It is the democratisation of language that is under debate. In the war between the will of the majority and the rights of the minority, the scales are tipped heavily in favour of the majority and consequently, art, culture and language are increasingly becoming populist. Whilst such trends cannot be controlled, there is a very real fear amongst the classical minded, of the erosion of standards. On the matter of language, I swing capriciously between both points of view. Ahem...Mav, am the resident comma queen, and suffer deeply from the prediliction that you so lucidly describe!  
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art, culture and language are increasingly becoming populist
Are they really? Before there were dictionaries for prescriptivists to refer to, language must've been pretty populist. When most of the population couldn't read the dictionaries, actual usage must've still determined whether or not something was accepted by others as a word. Art - weren't Shakespeare's plays written "for the masses"? Wasn't Mozart pretty much writing popular music in his time? I'm sure you can think of visual artists who did the same. It's only we who consider such stuff "art" and modern popular stuff "not art". In two hundred years what we consider "popular music" will have moved into the realm of "classical*" or "art" music. And the words and meanings that most people use will still be understood by most people, whether or not they've made it into a dictionary.
* by this I mean the popular definition of classical music, oh pickers-of-nits
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* by this I mean the popular definition of classical music, oh pickers-of-nits.
Don't get me stYARTed, Bean.
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Frankenfood This one is also clever, but maybe cleverness is no longer allowed in modern day. I'm sure the people who combined such words as "twist" and "fiddle" to make "twiddle" were just as clever as the ones who coined "Frankenfoods".
I don't think it's all THAT clever, but...
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the corruption of our language
I think it's worse than a dialectic between classical/populist ~ in my experience this kind of prescriptivist nonsense not only begs the question, but is founded on a less than adequate understanding of the ongoing process which constitutes language. He tacitly assumes a model that sees 'the English language' as a finished artwork, not to be touched or tampered with...
I see it much more as an evolutionary process, a (number of varieties of) continuous flows to which we all add and subtract. Like any other human social product, it has the meaning, and only the meaning, that we collectively invest in it.
I'll fight yah fer that dubious honour, maahey! ~ I chose the name maverick more because of my errant spelling and punctuation than my social outlook, but just try harder nowadays!
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I see it much more as an evolutionary process, a (number of varieties of) continuous flows to which we all add and subtract. Like any other human social product, it has the meaning, and only the meaning, that we collectively invest in it.
Yeahbut®, Humpty said the same thing 120 years ago, and much more concisely.
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