evil passive on Language Log

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Wed May 2 00:17:38 UTC 2007


Arnold, please don't tell us those four wicked words are "hopefully," "presently," "contact," and "impact."

Those are my guesses anyway. The first three were big bad bugaboos forty years ago; I believe "to impact" (to affect) came later. (it doesn't appear in OED).

And remember when the adverbial suffix "-wise" was pretty much spawn of the devil ?

JL


"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote: ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender:       American Dialect Society
Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject:      evil passive on Language Log
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... with credit to ADS-L:

   http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004456.html

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