eggcorns and other wild beasts--the Bernei Madoff edition

[Baker, John]

        The law is _a_ ass, thank you.  With The Yale Book of Quotations
widely available, there's no excuse for not getting quotations right.

        How would you have drafted the statute?


John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Alison Murie
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 11:13 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: eggcorns and other wild beasts--the Bernei Madoff edition

On Mar 23, 2009, at 5:50 PM, Baker, John wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
> Subject:      Re: eggcorns and other wild beasts--the Bernei Madoff
> edition
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
>    There probably are situations where "meet and proper" sounds just
> fine, but this is not one of them.  The email, on page 79 of the PDF
> at
> http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sections/News_And_Analysis/_News/__ED
> IT %20Englewood%20Cliffs/LetterOfMadoffVictims.pdf, is stilted in the
> extreme.  The writer, whose identity has been redacted, apparently
> seeks to present himself as highly educated, but he comes across
> instead as a coxcomb.
>
>    In contrast, I don't have any problems with examples such as this
> sentence from the California Welfare and Institutions Code:  "Any
> order made by the court in the case of any person subject to its
> jurisdiction may at any time be changed, modified, or set aside, as
> the judge deems meet and proper, subject to such procedural
> requirements as are imposed by this article."
>
>
> John Baker
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, so nameless writer in para 1 is a coxcomb. The language of para
2 prompts me to recall that "the law is an ass."
AM

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