Tuesday, December 15, 2009

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - G. K. Chesterton

***

While Singaporean English frequently has horrible constructions, there are also usages that are wrongly flagged out as incorrect.

For example, "alarmed" and "marketing" (which respectively can mean "fitted with an alarm" and "going to the market").

The word I will highlight today:

revert
(as in "please revert [to this e-mail]")

Yet, we find that:

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"revert, v

6. a. To go back, to recur, to a former subject of discourse.

1587 M. GROVE Pelops & Hipp. (1878) 49 But leaue we them..And reuert to the Pallace, where no wight doeth idle stand. 1632 LITHGOW Trav. I. 26 This much in general.., and so I reuert to mine itinerary relation. 1660 F. BROOKE tr. Le Blanc's Trav. 246 Now I will revert to the Town of Barua, which I left for this short digression.

a1817 JANE AUSTEN The Watsons (1879) 359 His attention was so totally engaged in the business,..as never to revert to what he had been saying before. 1844 H. H. WILSON Brit. India III. 31 In the mean time, it will be convenient to revert to the more recent occurrences on the confines of Chittagong. 1875 JOWETT Plato (ed. 2) V. 70 Plato takes occasion to revert to his old proposal of the use of wine."


Even if you ignore the fact that language evolves, the fact that these "wrong" usages appear in our favourite dictionary should be enough to convince you that they are not wrong.

What other examples of wrongly condemned word usage can you think of?
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