evil passive on Language Log

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On May 1, 2007, at 5:17 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> 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).

one out of four, jon.  a pretty good score, i think.

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

oh my, yes.

arnold

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