661–670 of 735 posts
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If we were speaking out loud you could figure it out
We're not speaking. You might as well be saying "if things were different, they'd be different."
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> "com" + "prise" = "grasp together". This is a terrible argument first because etymology is not meaning, but more importantly because "grasp together" doesn't seem to rule out the errant meaning. "This table setting grasps together a plate, a cup, and several pieces of silverware." seems if anything less wrong than "A plate, a cup, and several pieces of flatware grasp together this table setting."
Your argument is that etymology doesn't matter, but you also make the etymological argument the other way? Well, ok, but we are not criticizing use of "comprise" but of "comprised of". This table setting grasps together [three things]. This table setting comprises three things. This table setting [together grasps] three things. These are all correct. *This table setting is grasped of a plate, cup, and flatware. *This…
You talk a lot here, but none of it actually follows. People write "is comprised of" because they confused it with "is composed of". "Com-pose" means "place together"; doing the same things does not make clear which should be which way 'round.
For the record, I kinda like having a separate word for "makes up" versus "is made up of" and would prefer people stop confusing the two. I just don't think we need garbage arguments in support.
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We're not speaking. You might as well be saying "if things were different, they'd be different."
We're communincatng with English. What about things like ur to replace your or you're in text. None of you can figure that out?
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You want me to answer questions like "how do we make judgements about things?" I don't think this is that sort of venue sorry.
Okay now you're just trolling me. The question that starts with "I have a question for you." Did you look at the Orwell link. > Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Language is indeed consciously shaped. Look at the history of Italian. It doesn't just happen, and Wikipedia definitely doesn't just happen. And if you…
That's what language is. That's how language works.
I love Orwell, but he was flat wrong in that essay. He was playing at being a linguist and showing his ignorance.
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> > It's completely unnecessary. There are many other ways to say what the writer means by "comprised of". It adds nothing to the language. I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied its ideas. In the novel, the totalitarian state of Oceania uses that exact same justification to promote the use of the Newspeak language: > After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of…
I don't agree with your 1984 analogy at all. A better source might be George Orwell's actual, explicit opinions on politics and the English language: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... Orwell certainly did not take an "anything goes" approach to language, which is essentially what you and others argue for, in the mistaken belief that you're somehow striking a blow at totalitarianism. From…
Why people think they're entitled to their own ignorance is quite beyond me.
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If you look up the word “comprised” in multiple dictionaries they all define it including “consists of”, “composed of”, “made up of” etc. So right off the bat your argument is flawed. Perhaps you would like to define it the way you did, and perhaps some set of people you converse with may, but the point of a dictionary is so we can define words in ways we all agree on so we all understand each other. As we have learn…
I'm looking at Merriam-Webster; it doesn't corroborate your claim; it says that "comprise" is defined as "be made up of". Nothing about "comprised" meaning "made up of". Since Merriam-Webster's "comprise" means "be made up of", it follows that the past tense "comprised" means "was made up of". > the language losses something in the process Not all trends in usage are good and useful, and it's probably good to nip the…
> What we have lost by comprise being commutative is the ability to make that inference.
I think you’ve realized the value of trying to maintain precise meanings of words.
In fact, technically, we haven’t really lost the ability to make that inference, since that’s what the word means. That’s why its definition is “be made up of”. The froznitch is made up of gronfuzzle. Adding “of” to the end shouldn’t change anything. The usage of the word in reverse is the problem, and has been maintained as incorrect for hundreds of years. “Nine players comprise the team” is not grammatically correct. (Although as is noted, this has changed somewhat recently, and editors would argue not for the better)
So in fact this proves the point that editors making such changes are what help maintain the value of precise language.
I’ll just leave you with the following, since arguing definitions of words is always a losing battle, since language is too fluid.
It’s not wrong, nor “bad” to wish words change or be used in certain ways, especially when common usage of a word can cause confusion or be more ambiguous.
There’s always a place for editors, those seeking to make the written word more precise and clear, and even if you disagree with this one, or others, I would simply say that the assessment that editors are pointless, or “twits” is unfair and dismissive of their value.
> “Drivel spoken by poor colored folk is destroying our language!"
This statement comes across as virtue signaling. Pidgins, creoles etc are spoken by people of all skin colors and statuses. They are also amazing parts of cultural history.
But there’s a difference between speaking with your family, fellows, community etc, and publishing written text for mass consumption.
I don’t think anyone would argue that we’d be better off with encyclopedia’s being published in pidgin, leet speak etc etc.
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OK, but does that mean the phrase should be used as such in an encyclopedia? For instance, the word "biweekly" now means both "once every two weeks" and "twice per week". I don't mind usage of that word for those two meanings. Obviously, linguists can gather data and analyze how it's being used. They may conclude that one meaning was more favored 50 years ago and the other meaning is now. But when I'm reading an ency…
Your example doesn't map, though. There is no ambiguity when I say "curry is comprised of beans and carrots". It's just a way of using the word that some native speakers have used their whole lives and other native speakers find jarring.
Some time later, I came across the usage "X comprises Y and Z" and, based on my previous understanding that "comprise" == "compose," I took that to mean "X composes Y and Z" which, in other words, means "Y and Z are made up of X". But really, it means the other way around which is that "X is made up of Y and Z!" Only when I learned about the dual meaning of "comprise" did I correctly understand it to mean the latter.
To this day, I still have to actively juggle this arbitrary "dual-rule" in my head when I come across "comprise."
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hey qq who decides what correct is
Well this guy on Wikipedia, who clearly cares more then you do, for one. Dictionaries, style guides, people like Orwell, the French do have a ministry to maintain the language. I've answered your question, now I have one for you: Did you even glance at the link? I'm sorry, these epistemologically relativist arguments lead to utterly absurd conclusions. How does wikipedia work at all? How can we ever make judgements a…
Dictionaries generally explicitly do not define what is correct, they describe what is in use (often with notes about the contexts of common use).
> style guides
Style guides do not define what is correct for the language, they define what is correct for those adopting the style, they are intentionally by design more limited than what is acceptable in the language to serve, for adopting institutions, the function of providing a common style (that’s why they are called style guides, rather than language guides.)
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Well this guy on Wikipedia, who clearly cares more then you do, for one. Dictionaries, style guides, people like Orwell, the French do have a ministry to maintain the language. I've answered your question, now I have one for you: Did you even glance at the link? I'm sorry, these epistemologically relativist arguments lead to utterly absurd conclusions. How does wikipedia work at all? How can we ever make judgements a…
> Dictionaries Dictionaries generally explicitly do not define what is correct, they describe what is in use (often with notes about the contexts of common use). > style guides Style guides do not define what is correct for the language, they define what is correct for those adopting the style, they are intentionally by design more limited than what is acceptable in the language to serve, for adopting institutions, t…
He introduced American spelling and American English.
By constrast the Oxford English Dictionary was created by lexicographers intent on mapping the usage of English across space and time, they created multiple entries for each form | usage of root words and added copious notes (in the full multi volume OED editions) regarding first usage, alternate spellings, regional changes, etc.
The OED is a descriptive dictionary.
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> Dictionaries Dictionaries generally explicitly do not define what is correct, they describe what is in use (often with notes about the contexts of common use). > style guides Style guides do not define what is correct for the language, they define what is correct for those adopting the style, they are intentionally by design more limited than what is acceptable in the language to serve, for adopting institutions, t…
Noah Webster, of the US Webster's Dictionary was a language reformer and created a prescriptive dictionary intended to "correctly instruct" people about what he believed the correct use and spelling of English to be. He introduced American spelling and American English. By constrast the Oxford English Dictionary was created by lexicographers intent on mapping the usage of English across space and time, they created m…
Yes, he was.
And while some of his reforms caught on and remain in use to this day, his approach to dictionaries generally did not. When I said dictionaries do not do that, the verb tense was significant.