More on substituting

[victor steinbok]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 1:54 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

> ...
> reversed "substitute" seems to be getting to the point that intensifying
> "literally" and speaker-oriented "hopefully" got to some time ago, when they
> began appearing in edited text.  the outcry gets serious at that point --
> and the outcry rarely has any impact (these two are now standard variants).
>  but it's a sign of change in progress.
>
> arnold
>


We always notice, of course, the cases where such complaints had no
long-term effect. Are there any that might have had an effect? Or is it a
guarantee that once a "undesirable" (by the "elites") expression enters
colloquially, it will soon become standard?

Final point--complaining about people expressing language-related pet-peeves
is about as likely to succeed as those peeved complaints themselves. I doubt
it's a worthwhile cause for a prolonged battle--at least, in this venue.
Even if you think that those who are peeved should know better.

VS-)

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