Talk:List of English words with disputed usage

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I think actually the more common dispute about hoi polloi is whether or not it should be preceded by the word the, as hoi is Greek for the. Nohat 03:44, 2003 Sep 11 (UTC)


Pronunciation: In English 'hoi polloi' rhymes with 'boy' not 'bee'. DJ Clayworth 14:29, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)


I do not believe that the usage of "less" is disputed. What evidence is there of this 'dispute'? 80.255 18:56, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

See the AHD Usage Note at 'few'

What makes "Whom are you talking to?" a "dubious" usage? I believe it would be pretty common upper-class British usage (though I could be wrong, not being an upper-class Brit, myself). - Jmabel 07:59, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Your raising the issue confirms that indeed it is dubious (which just means doubtful or undecided). 'Who are you talking to?' can be justified on the grounds of common usage. "Whom are you talking to" is dubious because it is not very common at all, perhaps because most (or all?) of those who wish to be "grammatically correct" would also be grammatically correct with respect to avoiding the dangling preposition. I'm not saying it's "correct" or "incorrect", just dubious. By the way, I think you'll find purists everywhere deprecating 'Whom are you talking to?', not just in Britain. Peak 19:10, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think you'd find that while the grammatical "arguments" for 'whom' and against 'dangling prepositions' are both pretty lame and old-fashioned, the "argument" for 'whom' is a lot stronger and based in actual (old-fashioned) usage than the proscription against fronting the wh-word objects of prepositions. Hence, the construction "whom are you talking to" is certainly one that someone that finds merit in the former rule and none in latter might use. Secondly, while you claim that dubious "just means" doubtful or undecided, the fact that you have to specify a definition means that your usage of the word is questionable. Indeed, the word dubious has the connotation that the speaker or writer is almost certain that the matter in question is not true. --Nohat 20:34, 2003 Dec 24 (UTC)
I think you need to better establish was constitutes a "dispute" and on what grounds. "Whom are you talking to?" is good english and indisputably so. "Who are you talking to" is grammatically incorrect, but in common usage. There is no "dispute" whether the former is correct or whether the latter is incorrect. The only dispute I can see is whether the latter should be accepted as "common usage". Dangling prepositions are an inventiuon of Loweth and have nothing to do with English grammar, merely style and perceived elogance; the same can be said of split infinatives. 80.255 16:07, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I think it is clear that what constitutes a "dispute" is when a prescriptivist declares as "incorrect" some usage that is commonly employed. Although you may not like it, English usage has been increasingly replacing whom with who for hundreds of years and eventually whom will go away entirely. The assertion that it is grammatically incorrect to use who for all cases is in conflict with the assertion that it is in common usage. How can a rule that declares something grammatically incorrect in direct contradiction to common usage be anything other than someone's particular point of view on how the language ought to work? This notion of "correctness" is unfortunately not grounded in reality. Nohat 00:53, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
'Whom...' is obviously right and 'Who...' wrong, but 'Whom...' is so uncommon and obviously pedantic that it's pretentious and therefore ill mannered, so I'd say that 'Whom are you talking to?' is not correct in genteel British usage. If anything, it sounds snobbish and bourgoise. Rentwa 22:52, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Link to Fowler would be good.


Contents

[edit] To do

  • Transpire
  • Brutalize
  • Decimate
  • Hysterical
  • Peruse
  • Comprise

[edit] new items that need to be explained better

I removed these newly added items:

  • Momentarilly - does this mean after a moment has passed, or after a little amount of time has passed?
Well, my dictionary says both. What exactly is the dispute about?
  • Mutual means only reciprocated between two people, not any more.
According to who? M-W say:

Main Entry: mu·tu·al Pronunciation: 'myü-ch&-w&l, -ch&l; 'myüch-w&l Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French mutuel,from Latin mutuus lent, borrowed, mutual, from mutare to change -- more at MUTABLE 1 a : directed by each toward the other or the others <mutual affection> b : having the same feelings one for the other <they had long been mutual enemies> c : shared in common <enjoying their mutual hobby> d : JOINT 2 : characterized by intimacy 3 : of or relating to a plan whereby the members of an organization share in the profits and expenses; specifically :of, relating to, or taking the form of an insurance method in which the policyholders constitute the members of the insuring company

I'd say that only meaning 1a and 1b even imply that only two people can be involved. The rest don't seem to have any such restriction. Are you saying that for example "Mutual insurance" is incorrectly labeled?

--Nohat 17:34, 2004 Feb 6 (UTC)

The British argument (which I've only seen in a preface to Our Mutual Friend besides OED) is that mutual describes relationships, and if you only mean 'common' then 'mutual' is wrong. OED gives this usage as 'disputed'.
According to this interpretation, "Mutual Insurance" would only be right if as well as the company insuraning my house, I also insured their offices :) . Rentwa 23:12, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage cites examples of "who" directly after a preposition, from Shakespeare ("To who, my lord?") to Faulkner ("About who?"). It's still very rare in print, but not so beyond the pale as to merit being marked as "incorrect" when it could simply be "disputed". Tablesaw 07:50, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

I thought about adding "Alright", but then I realised that's not an incorrect usage but an incorrect word altogether. Is there an article dealing with that sort of thing? Lee M 03:10, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't go on this page, but I wouldn't call it an "incorrect word altogether", as it seems to be in at least one of the dictionaries I use: [1] Nohat 03:16, 2004 Mar 10 (UTC)
Well, my Eng Lang teacher in high school (all of 30 years ago, when schools actually taught good English usage, he sneered) was always drumming it into our heads that "there's no such word as alright", so as far as I'm concerned it'll never be a real word.... Lee M 01:24, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Merriam-Webster says under usage:"The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing <"the first two years of medical school were alright" -- Gertrude Stein>.
Some of those self-same teachers who taught "good English usage" perpetuated the myth that you cannot end sentences with prepositions, or split infinitives, etc. SigPig 21:38, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Now that someone has gone to the trouble of adding "prescriptivist" to every entry I'd hate to revert all that work, but it seems to me it's a pretty uninformative change. If you want to make a point about the relative merits or demerits of prescriptive rules, it belongs in a note at the head of the article, or even better as a link to this dispute in some other relevant article. Adding "prescriptivist" into every entry looks more like psychological warfare than helpful information, plus it's ugly. I wonder if the perpetrator or some other helpful soul could be convinced to make these changes. --Chinasaur 19:58, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

That was me. I noticed that many of the entries seemed to be asserting that various points of view about usages were facts. If you look at the changes I made, I didn't just add the word "prescriptivist" to each entry—I revised many of the entries so as to clarify who is making claims about correctness, which is invariably prescriptivists, and so the phrase "some prescripitivists claim" was a frequent addition. If you have a better suggestion for how to contextualize the claims without using the word "prescriptivist" or equivalent ("language purist", "usage writer", etc.), please go ahead and revise. But simply taking out the word "prescriptivist" will remove information. One of the crucial questions that has to be answered for each disputed usage is "who is doing the disputing", and the answer is "prescriptivists". If you simply assert the prescripivist position without contextualizing who makes the assertion, it's a violation of NPOV policy. Do you really suggest it is possible to neutrally describe a dispute without identifying the disputants? Nohat 21:03, 2004 May 20 (UTC)
I think I understand the POV problem you're talking about, but to me it seems like adding "prescriptivist" to every article is not really addressing that problem directly. The article wasn't "asserting" any position before; it identified some usages as "disputed" and identified the disputants as "some" or "some critics"; that seems acceptably NPOV to me (okay, looking back at the history there were some entries where the original wording was too one-sided, but you modified a lot of other entries where it was fine to begin with).
What you did for the most part was just identify the "some" or "some critics" as "some prescriptivists", which is accurate enough but doesn't add any information unless we actually explain what a prescriptivist is, what the internal logic of the position is, etc.. So I was just hoping that someone would do that, or add a link to another article providing that information. Looks like someone has indeed linked to a prescription article, so that's good.
Three things were distasteful to me about about adding "prescriptivist" everywhere. First, it's ugly. I'm not advocating "elegant variation", but repeating one phrase over and over again unnecessarily is just not easy or enjoyable to read. Second, making the vocabulary this unilateral seems manipulative to me. This is a tricky issue, because in fact it's true that you can dismiss everything in this article with a single argument against prescriptive linguistics. Still, the monopolization of the vocabulary seems to encourage this kind of dismissal, and that doesn't seem NPOV to me (sorry if I'm getting a little too feminist PoMo here). Finally (and related to last point), we actually lose information by saying that every dispute can be attributed to "prescriptivists". Better to point out that in one case the motivation for prescription is etymological, in another purely historical, in another based on cognitive linguistics, etc..
I guess to me saying every usage dispute is due to "prescriptivists" is like saying everyone pro-life is Republican. It might be (as least mostly) accurate, but it isn't very informative; instead it glosses over important differences in ideology, and in doing so makes it too easy to simplify by grouping everyone of a differing opinion into one camp... --Chinasaur 01:21, May 21, 2004 (UTC)
"Anti-prescriptionism" is just as much a POV as "prescriptionism" itself. That there are rules of grammar is a fact; they are not inventions of "prescriptionists" - they are real patterns that can be seen to be present in the language. Now, I could writes ignornizing every ones of they and you're coulds still understanded basically it who me says! Even the most fanatical "anti-prescriptionist" would be forced to admit, that, whilst he could understand that sentence, the grammar was none the less wrong. 80.255 16:22, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I have to very strongly disagree with this sentiment. The so-called "rules" of prescriptive grammarians are an invention of those wanting to control and regulate the language. There are descriptive rules, which attempt to create a model for how language works -- but these are "descriptions" of the language as it is used and not prescriptions as to how it should be used. Your ungrammatical construction, while understandable, is ungrammatical because it has no currency--it is an idiosyncratic construction. There are communities in which grammars have evolved that are "ungrammatical" by prescriptivist standards, but which nonetheless have their own internally consistent rules of grammar which can be described and which are undertood by speakers in such communities. Happily, the English language has proven remarkably resilent to attempts by prescriptivists to stifle change and innovation. older≠wiser 16:43, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)
I second. While perhaps "anti-prescriptivism" is POV, certainly "descriptivism" is inherently NPOV. Descriptivism describes how language is actually used without making claims about "correctness". Instead descriptivist claims are about grammaticality. The "without rules we have chaos" argument is a tired cliche that doesn't obtain. The use of language is indeed governed by rules; however, what those rules are is decided not by self-appointed arbiters of correctness, but by the mass of usage as a whole. Descriptivists would be fine to state a rule that states "bit man dog" is not a grammatical English sentence because it is in fact a "rule" of English that no native speaker of English would say that. On the other hand, a rule that states "that ain't true" is not a grammatical English sentence is descriptively invalid because lots of native English speakers would say that. All of the examples on this page are words that native speakers certainly do use in a particular way (and are thus valid from a descriptivist viewpoint) but are rejected as "incorrect" by at least some prescriptivists. While some prescriptivists would argue that "This lane 12 items or less" is incorrect, to the descriptivist, it is perfectly grammatical because it enjoys such a great volume of usage. Nohat 00:38, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Mayhap what it needs is a longer intro that raises the issue of usage prescription and commentary at the outset, so that it's on the table for what follows, whatever follows. Smerdis of Tlön 01:36, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] needs review

I'm not active in the article; the recent edits by User:80.255 don't look wrong enough for me to just roll them back, but there are misspellings, grammatical errors and mayb even some dubious claims. Someone active in this article should review. -- Jmabel|Talk 19:30, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Point in time

The British don't recognize the usage of this phrase(?)--Jondel 11:35, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

'At this point in time' is very common in British English, although simply means 'now'. Orwell would have hated it. Rentwa 23:00, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Literally

The usage of this word is not disputed - it is merely used incorrectly by very many people and should be removed. 61.195.156.129 04:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Words with Disputed (or Erroneous) Usage: Refute

I think it merits noting in the entry for REFUTE that the more precise word to use when meaning "to deny" (other than deny...) would be REPUDIATE.

[edit] Among/amongst

Concerning the section explaining between versus among, amongst. I personally feel though not a native English speaker: Amongst means "in the middle or centre of more then two" and among "just somewhere in the area described by the several items mentioned".

So the undisputed usage of among/amongst x between could be disputed on the grounds that we cannot share money in the middle and the house could be in the central place where the tree grow.

[edit] Remove Render. Rogers

I removed "render" and "Rogers". In the case of the former, the entry did not indicate how any usage of the term was in dispute. In the case of the latter, this article has nothing to do with whether or not forenames are similar to surnames and therefore a cause for confusion (!). --SigPig 14:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Should youth/youths be added here?

Also, possibly, person/people/peoples/persons?

See "Talk:Persecution of Bahá'ís#Youths, by the way, is good grammar" for reasonings. I won't be adding it to the list, obviously, as I have strong feelings about it and not an NPOV at all. If two fellow Bahá'ís can't get along about such minutiae — when talking about the persecution of other Bahá'ís — then perhaps we have a disputed usage.

  • Opposing view first : 'youth' is both singular and plural and 'youths' does not exist in standard English.
  • My view : 'youth' can be either a count noun or a mass noun and when it is a count noun, the word pluralizes to 'youths'. Iainsona 16:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I read through the thread; surreal. I don't know if the term is "disputed" in the way used here: I believe that this article has to do more with disputes between published sources, such as style guides and dictionaries. The "opposing view" is only held (as far as we know) by those editors in that thread; they are therefore unciteable, and their opinions are original research.
You may, however, wish to include "people" as that does appear to be in dispute according to American Heritage Dictionary[2], and since you did touch upon that in your thread.
And you made me go through this edit to make sure it was all standard English (which it probably is not). You linguist, you! Go home, yer mudder got buns. :) --SigPig 19:42, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry ... I guess that I was also feeling a little, well, for lack of a better word: persecuted. I just needed to hear someone else here say that I wasn't crazy so thanks. :) I can leave it be now for a while unless and until someone else brings it up whereupon I can support them ... or maybe they'll change their minds themselves; stranger things have happened. Iainsona 20:52, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] None

Should "none" be added? Seems like people use it in the singular quite often when it should be plural. "Of the five dogs, none was/were barking."--207.230.48.9 05:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an English major, but I think that usage sounds correct. "Of the five dogs, none (not one) was barking" I believe the pronoun "none" is singular. See Wiktionary's entry on none. Jecowa 22:12, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contemporary as Modern

Contemporary is most definitely defined as modern. In addition to its common usage just about everywhere, the Oxford English Dictionary entry for contemporary lists this definition in fourth place as "a. Modern; of or characteristic of the present period; esp. up-to-date, ultra-modern; spec. designating art of a markedly avant-garde quality, or furniture, building, decoration, etc., having modern characteristics (opp. PERIOD n. 15)."

I think its inclusion in a British dictionary means that it is an accepted definition in British English as well as the other dialects (I'm Australian and hear/see it used in this sense all the time), it even quotes Aldous Huxley using the term in 1925. I think contemporary should be removed from the list, unless anyone can come up with a substantial dispute? Dotto 12:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Here is the full definition from my Concise OED 1991:
contemporary adj. & n. -adj. 1 living or occuring at the same time. 2 approximately equal in age. 3 following modern ideas or fashion in style or design. -n (pl -ies) 1 a person or thing living or existing at the same time as another. 2 a person of roughly the same age as another.
Sense 3 is closest to 'modern' but still not synonymous with it. Eg a building which was new could be described as 'modern', but only 'contemporary' if it was built in the latest architectural style.
Which OED are you using? Rentwa 14:39, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diagnose

According to American-Heritage[3] and Merriam-Webster[4] you can both "diagnose a disease" and "diagnose a patient". I'd like to see a cite that says that the second usage is disputed, since neither AHD nor M-W offer any usage notes. --SigPig 21:15, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to see a cite that second usage is standard British English. Rentwa 14:17, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
But while I'm waiting, how about this?[5]
'Is it possible to "diagnose with a disease" (as in "She was diagnosed with cancer") or, for that matter, to receive a "free gift"? No on both counts, says Cochrane, another Brit with a sincere regard for the English language and a strong desire to correct those who mangle it..' Rentwa 15:19, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
WRT Mr Cochrane, if he's a language or grammar expert, by all means reinstate the entry and add him in as a cite to the contrary position. --SigPig 19:03, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually, it would be good to see some entries from respected usage guides (Fowler et al); the dispute seems to arise between the prescriptive (dictionaries) and the descriptive (usage guides/grammaries). Whether or not the word "foo", say, can be used in a particular context ("Foo all the elephants!") may be seen by some to be undisputed if there is consensus in the dictionaries; on the other hand, if Fowler states that "'Foo' is an intransitive verb and never takes a direct object", well, we have our dispute then, don't we? It was your mention of Cochrane that twigged me to that; I did a little checking on him Googlewise (the be-all-and-end-all of computer-based research), and it mentioned he was an editor with some 30-odd years experience (although he is not without his detractors, even in the linguistics community).
And as for selection of dictionaries, I apologize if you thought I had a hidden agenda to propagate American English usage (as a Canuck, heaven forfend!): M-W, AHD, and RH are available online and more readily accessible when I'm typing away; so please do not attribute to disingenuousness that which could more be accurately described as a slight (and somewhat embarrassing) lack of diligence. Cheers. --SigPig 19:20, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
And please check out this edit...perhaps this is a consensus? --SigPig 19:40, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough :) . And please forgive my combative manner. OED as I understand it is descriptive - a few instances of usage are enough to justify inclusion (there was a documentary about the OED inclusion process on British TV recently).
I don't want to bang on about the Atlantic divide, but what you obviously can't appreciate is how bad some usages sound to British ears. My other disputed (or should I say meta-disputed) entries both sound terrible to me, but 'seek' for 'try' is in my 1991 OED and 'contemporary' has become standard since 1991. But I only hear 'seek' for 'try' coming from politicians and the political media, and 'contemporary' from obviously uneducated style pundits on TV. The fact that they're used by these groups or in the OED doesn't alter the fact that they grate with thousands of reactionary bigots like me :) . Rentwa 22:07, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Concerted; contemporary

I removed theses entries:

  • Concerted: Not in dispute, but misused. Its use in "I made a concerted effort..." is not even alluded to in the dictionaries. Should be moved to List of frequently misused English words
  • Contemporary: Despite what this entry originally stated, contemporary does indeed mean "modern", as is attested by Random House[6], American Heritage[7], and Merriam-Webster[8].

It's amazing what you find out when you start citing your work. :) --SigPig 22:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

And amazing what you can prove by selecting your evidence! Rentwa 14:18, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by that, unless you are suggesting that I am selecting only a source or two, and ignoring others. If you have a counter-argument, or have other evidence, I suggest you add the relevant citation, rather than resorting to innuendo. --SigPig 13:28, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Seek

I removed this entry:

  • Seek - means 'look for', but is used to mean 'try' or 'want'. Highfalutin.
    • Disputed usage: '...we did seek to resolve the Iraq crisis by peaceful means....those who seek to emulate his legacy of murder....the Conservatives seek to undermine that future...'
    • Undisputed usage: 'Seek and ye shall find.'

All major English dictionaries I checked give a definition supporting this usage without comment:

  • M-W says "5 : to make an attempt : TRY -- used with to and an infinitive <governments...seek to keep the bulk of their people contented -- D. M. Potter>". [9]
  • RH says "4. to try or attempt (usually fol. by an infinitive): to seek to convince a person." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/seek
  • AHD4 says "5. To try; endeavor: seek to do good." [10]
  • OED says "7. a. To try to obtain (something advantageous); to try to bring about or effect (an action, condition, opportunity, or the like)."

Nohat 01:45, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

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