Reporters saying "TARMAC" how stupid!!

"Cub Driver" wrote in message

My favorite is in Michael Herr's "Dispatches", where he speaks of the
helicopters picking up the "tarmac" when the Marines pulled out of Khe
Sahn (however spelled).

daaaaaang. Somebody ELSE who's read that book, from which so much of Full
Metal Jacket was drawn. (Did you catch the part about the crazy Marine
named Dale Dye? Do a netsearch on him. He's a Hollywood standard now.)

....well...that went completely off the topic.

My generation destroyed the word "awesome." Werd, dawgs.

Which generation destroyed the word "awful" (which used to mean "awe
inspiring"?

And why in hell is it
called a "hot water heater"?

Actually, dishwashers have a hot water heater. You connect it to your
hot water, and it heats it even hotter before it washes the dishes.
And actually, all water has heat content, so can be called "hot", even
when it's cold.

Jose
--
Money: What you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 at 16:50:23 in message
et, Colin W Kingsbury
wrote:

I have heard both these terms (well, lorry, not lorry crash) from
American friends who spent their working lives in Cambridge MA.

There is no end to the strangeness of language and the subtle
differences between USA and UK English (in as much as there is any such
thing as UK English nowadays - the BBC have more or less abandoned it
for some time now).

On an area of 'tarmac' inside our factory there was once a notice
painted on the ground. 'Lorry's Only' it spelled. Leaving aside that
the plural of 'Lorry' is 'Lorries' it led to comments like who is Lorry,
and to what is he laying claim?

Have you all heard of the Englishman, who while in America, saw a sign
saying, 'Do not walk on the pavement', and was shortly afterwards killed
by a truck?

Some of our police forces have acquired PC madness. One is now referring
to minorities as 'Visual Minority Ethnics'. They don't even know that
ethnic is an adjective not a noun.

Another Force had Police districts which everyone had happily called
'townships' for years, but are now to be called 'partnerships' would you
believe? I leave you to guess the reasoning behind this.
--
David CL Francis

"David CL Francis" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 at 16:50:23 in message
et, Colin W Kingsbury
wrote:

I have heard both these terms (well, lorry, not lorry crash) from
American friends who spent their working lives in Cambridge MA.

There is no end to the strangeness of language and the subtle differences
between USA and UK English (in as much as there is any such thing as UK
English nowadays - the BBC have more or less abandoned it for some time
now).

On an area of 'tarmac' inside our factory there was once a notice painted
on the ground. 'Lorry's Only' it spelled. Leaving aside that the plural
of 'Lorry' is 'Lorries' it led to comments like who is Lorry, and to what
is he laying claim?

Have you all heard of the Englishman, who while in America, saw a sign
saying, 'Do not walk on the pavement', and was shortly afterwards killed
by a truck?

Some of our police forces have acquired PC madness. One is now referring
to minorities as 'Visual Minority Ethnics'. They don't even know that
ethnic is an adjective not a noun.

Another Force had Police districts which everyone had happily called
'townships' for years, but are now to be called 'partnerships' would you
believe? I leave you to guess the reasoning behind this.

Paradoxically, American English is an older style of English and more akin
to 17th C English, whereas English English has moved on. Churchill was right
where he described "Britain and America as two countries divided by a common
language".

The is an excellent book by Bill Bryson which explores the differences
"Made in America"

"gatt" wrote in message
...

"Bob Fry" wrote in message

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

Nauseous originally applied to that which causes nausea. It's been so
misused that lexicographers punted and included a second definition which
is
equal to nauseated.

Our language is difficult because it's a living language, and people
interpret to mean that however the common folk use it, that's how it
should
be. My generation destroyed the word "awesome." Werd, dawgs.

Why do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck
and send cargo by ship?

...park on a driveway and drive on a parkway? And why in hell is it
called a "hot water heater"?

Hamburgers made of beef?

"David CL Francis" wrote in message
...
They don't even know that ethnic is an adjective not a noun.

English adjectives, nouns, and verbs morph into each other all the time.
Dictionaries have long recognized 'ethnic' as a noun.

Taste in language is like taste in music. Whatever has changed since your
youth seems to you like a decline.

--Gary

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 13:12:22 -0800, "gatt"
wrote:

It's been so
misused that lexicographers punted and included a second definition which is
equal to nauseated.

But this is equally a cause of the problem. Lexicographers prior to
about 1975 believed that part of their job was to instruct people in
the proper use of the word, so they used pejoratives like "vulgar" or
"among stupid people" (well, they didn't go quite that far to
discourage misuse. Since I was educated by the nuns, I still believe
in the immutability of grammar and word definition.

Oh sure, things change over time, but the dictionaries should be a sea
anchor slowing change. For that reason, I much prefer the Shorter
Oxford to the Webster's Collegiate.

The SOE, by the way, defines Tarmac (which it capitalizes) in the
strict way, then adds:

"the tarmac: colloq. the runway at an airport etc:"

So the British evidently first stretched the word to the runway,
probably because it was indeed made of tarmadam, and the SOE editors
hadn't yet caught up with the notion that Americans apply it to the
ramp.

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 09:37:00 -0000, "Chris" wrote:

Hamburgers made of beef?

Hamburgers made in Hamburg, of gehactis, if I spell it correctly.

At the Frankfurt Press Club, the sovereign remedy for a hamburger was
gehactis mit ei (again, if I spell it correctly): a raw egg broken
upon a generous patty of raw hamburger.

Presumably an American sailor was served that remedy in Hamburg, and
imported the notion to the United States.

"What the hell do you call that?" he was challenged.

"Uh, uh, a hamburger?"

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 13:08:18 -0800, "gatt"
wrote:

Anybody ever bothered to correct the newsies? This would be interesting to
most of them.

I used to correct people who say "rice paddy" when they meant "paddy
field", but after thirty years I quit.

For the record, "paddy" is the young rice plant, which grows submerged
in water, in a paddy field.

When the water is drained, the same area becomes a rice field.

Now, I'll bet you all go home and talk about rice paddies! You can't
educate people if they don't give a damn, and who gives a damn about
paddy fields and tar macadam in this world of sorrow and sin?

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 22:58:54 GMT, David CL Francis
wrote:

Have you all heard of the Englishman, who while in America, saw a sign
saying, 'Do not walk on the pavement', and was shortly afterwards killed
by a truck?

That was Winston Churchill, wasn't it?

Oh no, he was only knocked down by a taxi cab because he looked the
wrong way when crossing the street.

When I lived in England, I used to shout silently at myself whenever I
stepped into the street: LOOK RIGHT UP! (The "up" helped, somehow.) I
is hard to break the habits of a lifetime.