evil passive on Language Log

[Jonathan Lighter]

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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