A Pedant's Lot Is Not A Happy One

[ajva]

I hate it very much when I see a shop advertise a chaise longue as a "chaise lounge". Ignorant tossers.

I hate it very much when people use the word fulsome incorrectly. In fact, I rarely see it used correctly these days, which makes me wonder if we are going to lose a very succinct and useful word to the inexorable onwards march of linguistic evolution. Damn.




In case you're scared to ask, "fulsome" does emphatically *not* mean "comprehensive" (don't get mixed up between "ful-" and "full"). It means something like "cloyingly insincere by excess", thus "fulsome praise" means praise that is too over the top to be sincere. Here endeth the lesson.

Comments

[countess-sophia.livejournal.com]

I've never come across the misuse of fulsome before. Mind you, words change their signified over time cf 'presently'.

My personal bete noir is when people deliberately mispell words, for example dropping the ae from paedophile, thus changing their meaning. The US spelling of mediaeval is another one.

Soph

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

My Greek isn't really good enough to be sure here, but are you saying that all pedophiles are foot fetishists? :-)