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| Originally Posted by DeathTöngue Not my point. I don't advocate a return to Chacerian english; I'm simply saying that sloppiness in expression is indicative of sloppiness of thought. The examples I used fall into two categories: Things said by people who wish to appear better-educated than they actually are ("octopi"), and things distorted beyond their meaning ("towing" the line is not "toeing" the line).
Ongoing evolution of language is to be encouraged. |
I was more picking up on your refusal of 'contact' to become a verb, despite its wide usage as such, and its publication in at least one dictionary as such. Doesn't that constitute evolution of the language?
That doesn't mean that we can whittle down to only one version of every simple homonym (their are to many reasons not to), but not allowing words to expand to different parts of speech is decidedly old-school prescriptivist.