[ExI] from quora - laugh of the day

[William Flynn Wallace]

It should have been 'a more nearly perfect union'.

My wife is a very understanding person who knows me well.  I could
introduce her as 'the little woman' or anything that might be offensive to
many people, and she would just laugh.  She would not do it, because it's
not her style.  But if it was, she could call me her 'old man' and I would
not be offended even though I am eleven years older.  Context is so
important in how we use language.  I am a big tease around students and
office staff and they know that very well.  No one with any sense would use
language with strangers, with acquaintances, that one would use with
friends and family.

Let's have some perspective here.   bill w

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 8:00 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
>
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> *…*> *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] from quora - laugh of the day
>
>
>
> >…Now what kind of purist uses 'sorta'?  Maybe a confused one?
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> >…As for 'sorta', I'll bet you also use 'kinda'.
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> Ja.  I wouldn’t put it in a tech paper, but rather I think of it as a
> phonetic spelling.  These creep into language over time.  After a while we
> get used to seeing them, and even the most reluctant among us will kinda
> accept it, as one of those vaguely annoying usages.  How we talk eventually
> impacts how we spell.
>
>
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> In the internet age, with the reply key, it is easy to do accidental
> misattributions.  For this reason, having minor quirks in one’s writing
> style, such as using kinda sorta, and obsolete terms such as proles,
> constables, my bride, hipster, ja and so forth can serve as useful clues
> that it was the old spikester who wrote it, and perhaps prevent a later
> poster from being blamed for the silliness.
>
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> Besides that, think of how much less annoying it is to hear the occasional
> kinda sorta rather than the universally annoying hackneyed and annoying
> “like” inserted about every third word in teenspeak.  I challenge my scouts
> to form sentences without using the term unless actually comparing two
> things, as in a simile.
>
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>  >…As for 'sorta', I'll bet you also use 'kinda'.  Right
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> Ja, far too often I fear.  It is a character flaw, on which I have focused
> far too little effort to correct.
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> >…I also say 'ghost poo' rather than 'packing peanuts'.  Do you?  Oh
> sorry, irrelevant example….
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> Oy vey, I have never heard either of these usages.  So tragically not hip
> I am.  I so need to get mod.
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> >…Year ago Edwin Newman wrote several books on words which I enjoyed
> ('the ize have it')…
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> I like Newman’s style too.
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> >… words that are not amenable to qualification, like 'perfect'….
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> That one I excuse because of the phrase “…in order to form a more perfect
> union…” which is understood to mean working towards a perfect union while
> recognizing a perfect union can never exist.
>
>
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> >…Called absolute words.  Fad usage has 'somewhat unique' or 'more
> unique' as acceptable.  Not me….
>
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> Ja, we know it means more rare, but it is possible to stretch a bit with
> some imagination.  Currently Magnus Carlsen is unique in that he is the
> only player with a current classical chess rating over 2800, but he whooped
> ass at the FIDE World Cup in September so he rose into the high 2800s,
> making him in a sense even more unique.  He is even uniquer than he was
> before the tournament and with that huuuuuge rating gap, he is now the
> uniquest chess player.
>
>
>
> Agreed, it is ugly, but my breezy commentary served to remind us of
> another of my stylistic quirks: emphasizing an adjective by replicating a
> vowel, the way we would speak it, as in the word huuuuuge above.
>
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> The internet has corrupted us all, Billw.  We are now all impuritans.
> Well… I am.
>
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> spike
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