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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
Oh you mean like an oar out of the water? or not being able to see the forest in front of his nose Gee I can't imagine why!
and yes.. people read less. and when they do read, its fiction, or demi fiction. and very few us (yeah, me included) read a lot of math --(well no, acutally i do read a fair amount of math, I just don't always understand it.) or science or economics or any technical subject. especially out of our field. Field? people have fields? Oh, please can i have one? i have always wanted to graze sheep-- (faldage can have his part (ugh!) if he wants it..) I want the wool!
some idioms live on.. and their origins are lost.. and they are easy to mangle -- other are like sleeping dogs--their barks are worse than their bites.
the trick is to be pleasantly peevish-- no sense in making your self unhappy because the world is inhabitted by idiots. (or as i say eejits!)
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
What hope is there when even those purporting to help the ignorant can't be trusted? There's a site called webshots which has very nice photos you can download. It also has a word of the day feature in which it gives a word, its definition, and an example sentence. Today's word was "desultory". The entry is:
Desultory: \DESS_ull_tor_ee\, a: 1. Occurring haphazardly; random. My desk may seem desultory to the untrained eye, but in fact, it is an efficient filing system!
A desultory desk??!! Who writes these things? How much are they being paid?
This is not an isolated example. About every third entry seems to have been written by the same person.
Bingley
Bingley
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and like "a lot of water has been passed under this bridge"
Rod
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 460
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Hi CK! Travelling well? An article in today's Melbourne Age quotes Richard Wade, a former deputy controller of BBC's Radio Four, as saying that only 17 per cent of native English speakers can spell the following words correctly: height, necessary, accommodation, separate, sincerely, and business.
He's a spelling reformer and has a website at freespeling.com.
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Joined: Feb 2001
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Giles Brandrith thi weekend on Have I Got News for You, a UK satirical News quiz on TV, referred to someone (who anyone?) as "manipulating the English language like a Rubik cube".
Rod
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
Hi CK! Travelling well? An article in today's Melbourne Age quotes Richard Wade, a former deputy controller of BBC's Radio Four, as saying that only 17 per cent of native English speakers can spell the following words correctly: height, necessary, accommodation, separate, sincerely, and business.
He's a spelling reformer and has a website at freespeling.com.
Hi Paul, the travelling is a little antarctic, I'm afraid. Hopefully it'll get better on Wednesday. Honolulu isn't known for its snowfall, fortunately.
Mr Wade and his views have been discussed on the Board before. I think that the general consensus is that some people already follow his approach. Goes contra to everything I believe, actually!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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