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Today, while coming back to the courthouse from lunch, I spied a car parked in the courthouse lot with a bumper sticker which read "The truly educated never graduate." Once I recovered from the pretension of its placement, I responded to it by leaving a small note, tucked under the windshield wiper on the driver's side. The note read "The truly educated know the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs." That was bad, wasn't it.
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formerly known as etaoin...
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Well, graduate is both a transitive and an intransitive verb:
1. intransitive verb finish school or college: to receive a diploma or degree after completing a course of study in a school, college, or university
We both graduated from high school in 1996.
2. transitive verb give a certificate: to give a diploma or degree to a student completing a course of study
3. intransitive verb move up: to move upward from one level or activity to another
I've graduated from skiing to snowboarding.
4. transitive verb mark something with degrees or levels: to mark something with units of measurement
5. transitive verb sort things by differences: to sort things into groups according to quality, size, or type
I'm having trouble seeing what it was to which you objected, Fr. Steve.
TEd
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to which Hey, don't pull Jo into this--she hasn't even been here for a while!  Whoa, Father Steve, whoa--you're wandering near the edge...and I'm right there along with you. Pull us back, somebody!
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Pooh-Bah
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>>Pull us back<<
Well, it *is a bumper sticker.
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Awwright, that does it: you and eta both come here a minute--I have something for each of you.
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what kind of car was it?
I'm no expert, but it looked like (about) a 1964 Volvo station wagon ... which must be what really well-educated people drive.
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Isn't arrogant superciliousness of the sort demonstrated by your retort kind of frowned in your vocation, Your Honour? If even a rabid prescriptivist like TEd concedes that "graduate" is both transitive and intransitive, you seem to be rather bereft of legs upon which to stand. Of course, watching prescriptivists make fools of themselves is part of the fun for me, so by all means keep it up.
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Beloved Max ~
Arrogance, superciliousness, rabidity, leglessness, and foolishness are among my BETTER qualities. You don't want to meet the really awful stuff. I also strive to entertain -- it is doubtless a defect of character rooted in some childhood neurosis -- and am pleased to have succeeded in your case.
Father Steve
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I find the superiority complex (so nicely demonstrated by what you wrote on the bumper sticker) intrinsic to prescriptivism particularly repulsive. Prescriptivism makes no sense logically, and makes otherwise nice people behave in a churlish and mean-spirited manner.
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Superiority, repulsiveness, illogicality, churlishness and a mean spirit are among my many other faults. Psalm 51:3 says: "For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me." Part of the way that my sins remain ever before me is that, when I fail to concentrate on them sufficiently myself, some other kind soul is always willing to point them out to me. For this, I am, of course, grateful.
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enthusiast
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Father Steve, I congratulate you on the aplomb with which you've handled the tirade from the grumpy old coot calling himself Max. To think that some people think I'm testy!
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addict
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Aside from the transitive / intransitive debate (where I agree "graduate" is both), I'll admit that I straightaway interpreted the bumper sticker text as meaning something like "the truly educated are those who never stop learning" (graduate = finish the stage of "formal" education, put it behind you and move on). I may be naive, but I'd think this meaning more fitting for a bumper sticker than the other. No? 
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In reply to:
I'll admit that I straightaway interpreted the bumper sticker text as meaning something like "the truly educated are those who never stop learning"
Which is why I went postal on our poor pacifist padre. The meaning is so obviously that which you give above, and yet prescriptivism demands that its slaves pretend not to see the meaning because of perceived infractions of "the rules". Gnats and camels, methinks.
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and here I thought Max was giving us some serious irony...
formerly known as etaoin...
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Graduate has been being used since the early 19th century as an intransitive verb, and is defined (without censure) as such in the first edition OED. Fowler's first MEU has nothing to say about it. Merriam-Webster's DEU mentions that the controversy began in the USA in the late 19th century by a couple of prescriptivists.
[Fixed typo.]
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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> couple of prescriptivists
husband and wife team?
formerly known as etaoin...
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The use of graduate that I abhor is "I graduated high school."
A\I always have the urge to ask how far apart the graduations were but I'm reasonably certain a person who would mouth that obscenity would not understand.
TEd
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The M-W DEU mentions that "John graduated high school" types of sentences have only been around 50 years or so, but mainly in informal, spoken English.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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husband and wife team?
Unknown, but probably not.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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a couple of prescriptivists Shouldn't this be over in the collective nouns thread? [whistling with eyes up e]
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Pooh-Bah
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>>The use of graduate that I abhor is "I graduated high school."<<
Is that significantly different than "We both graduated high school in 1996"?
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Shouldn't this be over in the collective nouns thread?
Nope, mayhaps if it were an "impetigo of prescriptivists". [e-con of palpal ineffability]
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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>>The use of graduate that I abhor is "I graduated high school."<<
>Is that significantly different than "We both graduated high school in 1996"?<
nope; nor is it significantly klutzier.
(they both could do with a High School From! 8 )
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The use of graduate that I abhor is "I graduated high school."
Why TEd? I'm don't understand why this is wrong since completing a course of study/receiving a diploma is one definition of the word. Can you explain please?
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...is this Information or an Announcement? Why not post this in Miscellany? (go ahead and subpoena me, Fr Steve, in PM -- hey, btw, whence sub-poena?!)
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BelM:
Here are the definitions for the verb graduate (I have reordered them to put the transitive verbs at the top):
5. transitive verb sort things by differences: to sort things into groups according to quality, size, or type
2. transitive verb give a certificate: to give a diploma or degree to a student completing a course of study
4. transitive verb mark something with degrees or levels: to mark something with units of measurement
1. intransitive verb finish school or college: to receive a diploma or degree after completing a course of study in a school, college, or university
We both graduated from high school in 1996.
3. intransitive verb move up: to move upward from one level or activity to another
I've graduated from skiing to snowboarding.
The usage I find abominable is:
I graduated high school. Even worse is I graduated college because there's more education wasted there.
Insert the transitive definition of your choice and see why I feel the sentence is just plain wrong:
I sorted high school by some criterion.
I drew evenly spaced lines up the side of the high school.
I gave the high school a certificate or diploma.
But it is OK to say the high school graduated me, giving me a diploma.
You could say the high school graduated the students by GPAs.
And I guess in a pinch you could say the high school drew lines on the student, but I wonder why they'd do that.
And those people on the dark side can call me a prescriptivist all they darned want to. A person who doesn't use good grammar is, in my book, sloppy, uneducated, lazy, or a combination thereof. And this is particularly true of those people who are raising children. If you want them to go through life grammatically challenged, then let them say Can I have a cookie instead of May I have a cookie.
TEd [/rant]
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Subpoena comes from the first two words of a legal writ which required a person to comply with some order of the court; it means "under penalty".
Under penalty, get your butt before me so I can try you, for example.
Writs were very long, often hundreds of words, and this is just a shorthand description of one of them.
Habeas corpus is another one.
And then there's subpoena duces tecum. That's a writ requiring the production of some item by the person upon whom the writ is served, usually a document, to the court. It means literally Under penalty, carry with you . . . and there followed more Latin along with a description of the items to be carried into court.
If you get a copy of Black's or a similar Law Dictionary and leaf through it you will find hundreds of these ancient writs, all described by the first two, three, perhaps four words of the original Latin in which they were written.
TEd
TEd
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Ah, so because it is intransitive, it needs the addition of "FROM" in the sentence because it cannot have a direct object. Or you'd actually be saying that you measured the high-school in some sort of way.
Am I understanding correctly?
P.S. Thanks for your patience. I admit to being well below Board knowledge when it comes to grammar.
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...is this Information or an Announcement?
1. It is information because it informed you that I did a bad thing last Tuesday.
2. It is an announcement because it announced to all the world that I am arrogant, supercilious, rabid, legless, foolish, superioristic, repulsive, illogical, churlish and mean spirited ... according to Max.
Why not post this in Miscellany?
1. I never post anything to Miscellany because I do not read Miscellany .. in an effort not to be consumed entirely by this Board. The little counter on my AWAD home page tells me that I have 30,199 unread posts under the Miscellany tab. Maybe more by the time you read this.
2. I won't engage in an argument about which category ought be the proper place for anything I post. Like G.K. Chesterton, "I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday."
(go ahead and subpoena me, Fr Steve, in PM -- hey, btw, whence sub-poena?!)
Back in the good old days, when courts were allowed to inflict cruel and unusual punishment willy nilly, a subpoena concluded with the legend: "HEREIN FAIL NOT AT YOUR PERIL." The recipient was left to imagine what might happen to one who ignored such an order from a court. Whatever that consequence might be, it was sure to be painful, hence the name "sub poena" meaning "under pain."
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> because I do not read Miscellany
but look what you're missing!
Subject
bumper stickers
That's vocabulary sorted, now for grammar
Coonhunters for Christ
Wilfully created ghost word
Abbreviations that don't work
Importhography
levee
copoclephilist
what word is that?
Giggles at work
Clothes Press
greyed out
Left in the lurch
Psychedelic
"on the ground"
how many other selective readers do we have? jes' wonderin'...
formerly known as etaoin...
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In reply to:
2. It is an announcement because it announced to all the world that I am arrogant, supercilious, rabid, legless, foolish, superioristic, repulsive, illogical, churlish and mean spirited ... according to Max.
Tsk, tsk, such imprecision from a prescriptivist - most unbecoming. I never said that you were such, I said that prescriptivism in general, and your actions in writing that note, demonstrated those characteristics. There is a difference between saying that someone's actions on a specific occasion demonstrated arrogance and saying that said person IS arrogant, na? In fact, the only comment I made about you personally was that you were a nice person (you can choose which nice).
Even descriptivists can use language to make fine distinctions, y'know.
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We both graduated from high school in 1996.
Or either you could say that the "from" was elided. Works for lots of things.
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I once got dinged by a section leader in a chemistry class for referring to "pouring 50 ml of (something-or-other) from a graduate." His comment was "You poured from a graduated cylnder. I am a graduate!" Here is a picture of a graduated cylinder, a device for measuring precise amounts of liquids: http://makeashorterlink.com/?E52921ECBAt the risk of belaboring the obvious - you didn't graduate from school, you were graduated from the school, making you a graduate of that school. (But that may be fighting a lost battle, like trying to insist that "loan" is a noun...Can't you imagine? Mark Antony addressing the Roman populace: "...countrymen - LOAN ME YOUR EARS!")
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>Or either you could say that the "from" was elided. Works for lots of things.
Well, no, Fong, I could not say that. Why? Because it is my sincere belief that the person who would say "I graduated high school" would be totally befuddled if one suggested to him that there was an elision in his sentence.
TEd
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I'm not sure if the term is used elsewhere, but people of dubious sanity are sometimes called nut jobs here. Reading this thread, and the bleatings of the prescriptivists, I've come to the conclusion that, although sane, the appropriate epithet for them all is as above. Every devout prescriptivist is a Knut job, except with less chance of success than he had.
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how many other selective readers do we have? I read only:
Information and announcements
Q&A about words
Wordplay and fun
Miscellany, and
Weekly Themes.
If there happens to be a new post in Looking for (writers, speakers, ...), I'll take a gander, but that's it. I spend too much time at the computer. So if anybody wants to call me bad names, do so "below the fold" and I won't see them!
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