Fwd: are you serious?

[Grant Barrett]

Well, it's been a busy day for the ADS email box. Besides all the
messages from journalists, we received the beaut copied below, the only
really negative message.

I did have to do a lot of the usual polite "we don't invent the words,
m'am, we just note their existence" debunking. We also received many
letters from excited teachers, interested laypersons, people inquiring
about membership, several people trying to convince us to canonize a
word they've invented, and one asking about copyrighting a word
signifying the plural of nieces and nephews, something akin to
"children", a word which, alas, was not shared.

There was also a correspondent taking us to task for choosing a
*phrase* as *word* of the year, but he more or less apologized when I
explained that the vote is merely a fun little bit of whimsy from
people who otherwise spend their time writing the most impenetrable but
grammatically sound academic prose in the English language, and who do,
in fact, understand the difference between the a word and a phrase. I
think the key to winning him over was explaining that many of the
people who write "the dictionary" are the very people who participated
in the vote.

Which reminds me: the best ADS web site message I ever received (and
for some reason deleted, although I usually don't), was from an Indian
fellow who, excited by his recent learning about the common
Indo-European roots of many modern languages, extrapolated that a man
called "Pop" by his kids was probably married to a woman nick-named
"Mop" or "Bop." Something not quite right there...

Here's the message of the day:

> De: better dead than ed hitler <eddiehitler_99 at yahoo.com>
> Date: Mon 6 Jan 2003  18:53:37 America/New_York
> À: gbarrett at americandialect.org
> Objet: are you serious?
>
> apparently so.
>
> the world wide web never ceases to amaze me. there is
> so much useless garbage on the internet. words of the
> year? here are two for you: fool pool. think about it,
> you worthless shits.
>
> =====
>
> viva el huncho!
>
> Life is good!
>
>  It's time to go to http://www.realkeywest-art.com
>
>
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(Just kidding about the impenetrable academic prose part).

--
Grant Barrett
gbarrett at americandialect.org
American Dialect Society webmaster
http://www.americandialect.org/