In reply to:
Recently, one of our more fastidious grammarians pursued a usage of suspicious pedigree until it evaporated into the mists of coincidence.
Is this a case of supplanting a suspected offence against linguistic purity with an offence against scientific plausibility?
Well, et', what was the question? It appears that wordminstrel was writing the first sentence as one to examine with the part in blue to be considered by the board: "evaporated into the mists of coincidence." Wordminstrel writes next: "Is this a case..." And I took "this" to refer especially to the highlighted blue part of the sentence.
I understood the first sentence to mean that some grammarian was hot on the trail of some suspicious usage. [I'm so curious about this sentence now that I would love to know what the 'suspicious' usage had been, in fact.] This very determined grammarian doggedly tracked down the usage using whatever means were available until reaching that point that at which 'it' (it referring to either 'usage' or 'pedigree,' but most likely 'usage' though 'it' is closer to 'pedigree') evaporated into these troublesome mists.
Wordminstrel asks us whether this a a case of supplanting this case of the grammarian on that hunt to search out pedigree with an offence against scientific plausibility. Unless I completely misread the thread opener (and perhaps I did and will welcome having Wordminstrel say so), I think the essence of the question was one about the science in the statement, or, to simplify and be very direct:
Can something be said to evaporate into mists, scientifically speaking?
Well, no. Not exactly. Water vapor condenses into mist. But, as someone pointed out above, in the chain of events in the water cycle, part of what makes water vapor is evaporation from bodies of water--part of the cause, too, is transpiration from plants. We've discussed most of this. It seems to me, however, that to say something evaporates into a mist of anything leaves out a vitally important step in the water cycle: condensation. So the metaphor doesn't work for me personally on a scientific level. Wordminstrel was asking whether we thought there had been a scientifically plausible offense. I think there was; so does wwh; so does Vika and others up there. I think that's the question Wordminstrel was asking.
But I could be wrong. It would be good to hear from Wordminstrel.
Interesting discussion here all around.
