[etni] Are you towing or toeing the line?
- From: Barry Praag <bpraag@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 16:02:28 -0700 (PDT)
**** ETNI on the web http://www.etni.org.il http://www.etni.org ****
Howlers of modern English usage
By Richard Alleyne - The Daily Telegraph
(Filed: 08/07/2004)
Will defusing a bomb necessarily diffuse the
situation? Is it correct to pedal a bicycle or pedal
ideas?
According to the editors of the new Concise Oxford
Dictionary, up to half of us do not know the answers.
As part of compiling the 11th edition of the reference
book, which is out today, researchers discovered an
increasing confusion over simple words and phrases.
One in five believes we should tow the line when we
should toe the line. A further 10 per cent pour over a
book when we should pore over it.
The alarming increase in "mass dyslexia" was picked up
by the dictionary's 100 researchers across the world
on the look out for new words.
As they searched (or, perhaps, pored over) the Oxford
English Corpus, a database of 400 million written
words, they discovered that while spelling remains
reasonably strong more and more writers are mixing up
like-sounding words and phrases.
The most common error was the use of the phrase
diffuse the situation when it should be defuse the
situation. Up to half the examples recorded were
wrong.
Similarly, a large number confused pedalling ideas
with the correct peddling ideas.
Angus Stevenson, the dictionary's co-editor, said:
"They are not so much spelling the words wrongly but
using the wrong words."
Mr Stevenson said his team believes that the chief
explanation was the use of the computer spell check
which does not spot errors of meaning.
He also thought that the explosion of the number of
people writing, mainly due to the internet, meant that
more errors were bound to creep in.
"People speak in fully made up phrases, just parroting
what they hear on television," he said. "They often
end up spelling the words wrong."
The dictionary includes 240,000 words, 2,000 of which
are new. These include:
? Herbert - an undistinguished or foolish man as in a
bunch of spotty herberts;
? Mentalist - an eccentric or mad person;
? Noogie - an instance of rubbing a person's head with
one's knuckles as a prank or to express affection;
? Va-va-voom - the quality of being exciting, vigorous
or sexually attractive.
Judy Pearsall, the publishing manager of English
Dictionaries, said: "People are writing more than
ever, especially in less formal situations such as
e-mail, weblogs and chatrooms, and it is here that we
see the most confusion.
"Whether such mistakes will, in time, spill over into
more formal types of writing is yet to be seen.
"The question is: does it matter if, in a generation's
time, people are writing about 'pouring over
magazines' or 'towing the line'?".
The findings come after a campaign, backed by the
American actor Bill Cosby, was launched to stop
British children from speaking patois in class. A
south London school is piloting a scheme to ban slang,
often based on the creole spoken in the West Indies,
because it is thought to contribute to the educational
failure of black pupils.
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