{"id":695,"date":"2024-06-30T11:18:22","date_gmt":"2024-06-30T17:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/?p=695"},"modified":"2024-06-30T11:18:25","modified_gmt":"2024-06-30T17:18:25","slug":"shifts-of-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/?p=695","title":{"rendered":"Shifts of Language"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;ve always known that languages evolve. But I didn&#8217;t realize how many changes I would be able to perceive in one short lifetime. Now, at the age of 57, I can personally report on some changes I&#8217;ve observed in English that I don&#8217;t consider helpful. Here are a few that spring to mind, in alphabetical order:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Another thing coming:<\/strong> It&#8217;s easy to see how this happened. Originally, the phrase was &#8220;another <em>think<\/em> coming&#8221;. But it&#8217;s hard to distinguish the &#8216;k&#8217; sound at the end of &#8220;think&#8221; and the initial &#8216;c&#8217; sound of &#8220;coming&#8221; from the combination of the &#8216;g&#8217; at the end of &#8220;thing&#8221; with the &#8216;c&#8217;. There&#8217;s also the unusual usage of &#8220;think&#8221; as a noun rather than a verb, which reduces the likelihood of it being recognized.<\/li><li><strong>As best as:<\/strong> The phrase &#8220;as best&#8221;, as in &#8220;to do as best one can&#8221;, sounds a bit awkward to modern ears, and many people feel a need to add another &#8220;as&#8221;, thus bringing the construction into line with that of similar phrases, such as &#8220;as good as&#8221; or &#8220;as well as&#8221;. But when you stop to think about it, there is a logic to it: &#8220;best&#8221; is superlative and needs nothing alongside it for comparison, unlike &#8220;good [as]&#8221; or &#8220;better [than]&#8221;.<\/li><li><strong>Besides the point:<\/strong> The original phrase was &#8220;beside the point&#8221;, but this seems to have gotten mixed up with the word &#8220;besides&#8221;.<\/li><li><strong>Comprised of:<\/strong> This has been an issue for a long time, maybe even all of my life. But it&#8217;s just not right.<\/li><li><strong>Could care less:<\/strong> When people say they &#8220;could care less&#8221;, what they really mean is that they <em>couldn&#8217;t<\/em> care less &#8212; literally the opposite. The point is supposed to be that your level of caring is so low, it can&#8217;t possibly go any lower. <\/li><li><strong>Doggie dog:<\/strong> I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;ve actually heard this &#8220;in the wild&#8221;, but I&#8217;ve seen the reports, which are chilling enough. It&#8217;s supposed to be &#8220;dog-eat-dog&#8221;.<\/li><li><strong>Flush out:<\/strong> This is often used when &#8220;flesh out&#8221; is really what&#8217;s meant. For example, &#8220;Let&#8217;s flesh out these requirements.&#8221;<\/li><li><strong>More so:<\/strong> Increasingly, I hear &#8220;more so&#8221; when a simple &#8220;more&#8221; would do. Example: &#8220;It&#8217;s not so much the hours, but more so the work environment that bothers me.&#8221; The word &#8220;so&#8221; is supposed to refer to something earlier, as in &#8220;Being hungry makes me irritable, and all the more so if I haven&#8217;t been sleeping well.&#8221;<\/li><li><strong>Step foot:<\/strong> More and more, to enter a room or space isn&#8217;t to set foot in it, it&#8217;s to <em>step<\/em> foot. Seems a bit redundant, and makes &#8220;step&#8221; into a transitive verb, where previously it had only been intransitive.<\/li><li><strong>Supposably:<\/strong> Should be <em>supposedly<\/em>.<\/li><li><strong>Verse:<\/strong> Almost everyone under the age of 45 seems to pronounce &#8220;vs.&#8221; as &#8220;verse&#8221;. It actually stands for &#8220;versus&#8221;. I&#8217;ve also heard that some people use &#8220;verse&#8221; as a verb, meaning &#8220;to go against&#8221;. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, well. Such are the travails of getting older. I&#8217;m not sure if any of these can be restored to their more sensible original understandings. I may just have to bite the bullet and learn to live with them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But before then, I can complain about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always known that languages evolve. But I didn&#8217;t realize how many changes I would be able to perceive in one short lifetime. Now, at the age of 57, I can personally report on some changes I&#8217;ve observed in English&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/another-think-1926-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7wJJ7-bd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":702,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions\/702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daneckam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}