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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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To go badly wrong is to go less badly wrong than plain wrong. In an extreme case, to go badly wrong may even be to go right.
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
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To go badly wrong is to go less badly wrong than plain wrong. In an extreme case, to go badly wrong may even be to go right. - inselpeter.
Yeah, goodbuddy inselpeter, that's what I was gonna say, but in the case before the board, it would take an even-more-so badly wrong turn, in order to make the turn-in-question become right. Follow? -mw
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
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Get on board, little children;
Get on board, little children;
Get on board, little children.
Der's room for many a more!"
...just another way of saying, here comes my two cents:
1. Terribly wrong -- terribly is used as an intensifier that our ears immediately accept because we're accustomed to hearing people refer to situations, people, things, and so on, as being "terribly this" and "terribly that":
terribly good sense of humor
The same goes for awfully:
awfully good movie!
However, badly, an often used adverb, is not used as an intensifier to the degree that terribly and awfully are.
2. Yes! In a strictly grammatical sense -- or in an awfully strict grammatical sense, badly can function as an adverb modifying the adjective wrong.
Problem is: The concept of wrongness subsumes badness. We think of something wrong as being something that needs to be made right or as something that should have been done right. So, by saying something is badly wrong rings terribly redundantly to my sensibility.
To say something is terribly wrong doesn't sound redundant because terribly sounds like a common, traditional intensifier. But to say something is badly wrong sounds awkward because bad and wrong are closely associated in fundamental meanings.
3. After having written about badly wrong for five minutes now, my ear has become accustomed to badly wrong turn, and I will become terribly happy to use the phrase every chance I get from this point onward. And, if, instead, my language takes a badly wrong turn in doing so, I would be awfully happy if one of you would turn me around and set me back on the straight and narrow.
Taking an awfully, terribly, badly wrong turn,
WrongWind
"badly wrong turn" wouldn't have made it past The New Yorker editors, I don't believe.
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Re: badly wrong turn" wouldn't have made it past The New Yorker editors, I don'
unfortunately, nowdays, it might.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 322 |
"badly wrong turn" wouldn't have made it past The New Yorker editors, I don't believe.
Huh? You don't believe it wouldn't, or you do believe it wouldn't? I'm terribly confused now.
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
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Boronia, I wrote and you wrote:
"badly wrong turn" wouldn't have made it past The New Yorker editors, I don't believe.
Huh? You don't believe it wouldn't, or you do believe it wouldn't? I'm terribly confused
Classically, terribly good example of a badly awful double negative executed in my sentence, huh?
Let me speak plainly here: I believe The New Yorker editors would not permit the phrase badly wrong turn .
Babbling regards,
Wordspin
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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"badly wrong turn" wouldn't have made it past The New Yorker editors, I don't believe.I believe that's what Faldage would call an emphatic double negative. Like "Not with my wife, you don't." I think it's perfectably acceptable in USn's colloquial speech, but praps not among our neighbors to the north. 
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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and sadly, i think our word wind is whistling the wrong tune if she thinks the New Yorker is as carefully edited today as it was in the past..
long gone are the days of using other publications poor choices in editing as little bon mots. nowdays, even i can find a mistake (ok once in 5 years.. but still!)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
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what Faldage would call an emphatic double negative.
Unfortunately. it's a logical double negative and they get incomprehensible real fast. Emphatic multiple negatives are easy to understand, as in my classic: I don't like to have to kill nobody without they ain't no chance of no gold in it for me.
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