Comments on: The noun disconnect

By: zimmer

zimmer — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:13:31 +0000

@ubuntucat.. yes, well it is a long time since the swinging ’60’s and even my 70’s edition of the concise Oxford places it as transitive (but with a poor definition). But my old English master, W G Bebbington MA (Oxon) would get in a right two and eight whenever he heard or read particularly that ’such and such conceded defeat’. He would clutch his chest and have a mock seizure, then produce a toy cap pistol from his cupboard and proceed to shoot the offending culprit/text. He would then proclaim the verb to be intransitive and that even if it WAS transitive conceding defeat was a totally incorrect use of the verb.
Nothing quite like a British eccentric, eh?

By: themcp

themcp — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:08:35 +0000

arbitrary word dislikes are one of the great joys of being a writer.

how about this one: acclimate or acclimatize? use the former, hate the latter. REDUNDANT. yet both are good usage. it’s just that extra syllable i can’t stand for some reason.

By: Ruth Merkis-Hunt

Ruth Merkis-Hunt — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:19:50 +0000

Hey, does anyone else remember when the word “text” was a noun? Nowadays, my son suggests we communicate through “texting”.

Other words I feel need to be removed from the English language include:
“healthful”
“flavourful”

and go back to saying “healthy” and “tasty”?

By: ubuntucat

ubuntucat — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:07:49 +0000

@themcp Your dread of impactful is understandable, as impactful is not a real word. Unfortunately, my disdain for the noun form of disconnect is completely unreasonable, as something can apparently be "a disconnect" and be completely grammatically correct. @zimmer Don't know if it's just an American thing, but Random House's dictionary says it's okay for concede to be used transitively as well. Grammar does sometimes differ from country to country.

By: zimmer

zimmer — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:48:14 +0000

Lost the battle over here with concede (an intransitive verb when I was a lad). Football (soccer) commentators fell in love with the word used as a transitive verb. Concede a goal, a corner, a free kick etc. and worst of all, news readers love to ‘concede defeat’ ! Arghhhhh… that still grates as an abuse of the English language. In my mind I can only translate that as ‘to agree to give up defeat’. Does that mean I’ve agreed to win? My former Enlgish master (if he is indeed deceased) will be spinning in his grave.

By: themcp

themcp — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:43:29 +0000

Working in a corporate environment, I have to cringe my way through a lot of terrible new buzzwords. My current least favorite is the dreadfully generic “impactful.”

I wonder if the use of disconnect has something to do with the rise of technology? Because it is sort of like technological metaphor for what we would have called a misunderstanding Back In The Gold Old Days(tm).