malaprop amongst the flowers
Mark A. Mandel
mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU
Mon May 3 16:48:55 UTC 2004
A local jazz disk jockey continually uses the word "arcane" when he
means "archaic". His special interest -- obsession, more correctly --
is the jazz styles through the bebop movement, and their discography,
band personnel, &c. I have heard him give the telephone numbers of a
Harlem club that closed in 1937. But to the point: he will say of,
perhaps, the C-melody saxophone, "it was already arcane when this
musician first started to play it". I suppose he could justify this if
he claims that "arcane" means "little known"?
We are wandering into the morass of prescriptivism here, of course.
What would the White Queen say?
<<<
So what? The guy's wrong. Tell him so, politely, of course.
-- Mark A. Mandel, stickler, fussbudget, prescriptivist, and maniac for
clear communication
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