GalacticCactus Forum
Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Tante Shvester on April 22, 2007, 10:59:51 AM
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I've heard of "putting your best foot forward", but I only have two feet. The best I can do is to put my better foot forward.
Although, I am a bit over five feet tall. Perhaps it is one of those feet I ought to be putting forward. Bit of a trick, that.
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Why do you think that for one to be best requires there to be more than two in the group?
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That is my understanding of the logic of English. I'm mistaken?
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Well, at the very least, that is not the logic of the English that I speak.
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Oh well, there I go again.
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Perhaps this phrase illustrates that that isn't the logic of English. :P
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Just when I was feeling all fine that most of my English is standard, Rivka has to point out to me (on SR) that when I think I'm using English, I barely am, and you all have to advise me that my grasp of the idioms is tenuous.
Oy!
I wouldn't feel so wrong about this if English wasn't my first language. Heck, it's my ONLY language. And I majored in it in school. Why can't I get it down pat?
Stupid English!
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Sorry; I didn't mean to say that your grasp of English is imperfect or anything like that. The problem with English is that it became very popular a few centuries ago for people to create "logical" rules for everyone to follow. But these rules seldom had basis in reality and usually contradicted centuries of English usage, even the usage of the greatest writers like Shakespeare and Chaucer.
When it comes to usage rules, people often tend not to question them and to accept them based on authority alone. So Joe Schmoe Grammarian gets it into his head that you shouldn't say "best foot forward" because you must have at least three things for one of them to be best, and soon other grammarians pick up on it and start repeating it.
And then, a few centuries later, you learned it in school, and now you're wondering how it is that we're stuck with a phrase that seems to violate a rule of English. But the rule was contrived and rests on a faulty assumption—that you must have more than two things in order to use a superlative. But it's not your fault for not being able to get it down pat—it's the fault of the eighteenth-century grammarians who made up rules that make it impossible for ordinary people to get it down pat.
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Just when I was feeling all fine that most of my English is standard, Rivka has to point out to me (on SR) that when I think I'm using English, I barely am, and you all have to advise me that my grasp of the idioms is tenuous.
Aw, I was teasing! And it was just two consecutive sentences, where you not only used a bunch of Yiddish words (the same ones repeatedly), but tossed in some French for good measure. ;)
As for the comparative v. the superlative, you are correct in theory (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm) -- but 'tis a custom more honored in the breach than in the observance. ;)
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Thanks for the reassurances, guys. It rarely occurs to me that what I'm using as colloquial, folksy language strikes other people as impenetrable. Until it is pointed out to me.
And I never met an 18th century grammarian that I liked. So there!
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Okay - my daughter just asked me (over IM) what the meaning is of the phrase "old as the day is long".
I had a hard time defining it, even thought I've used it. I said like, "always been done that way" or like the phrase "ancient history" or "old news" (like if you tell a joke they've heard for years, they might say, "that old joke? Oh, that's old as the day is long"
But am I right on that? How would you define it best?
Farmgirl
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"x as the day is long" just means "really x." Presumably, the day is really long, so if you're as honest as the day is long, it means you're really honest. I don't know why it's "day" and not something really long, like "year."
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Unless you're in the arctic (or antarctic) during the winter. Then it means "really not x".
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"x as the day is long" just means "really x." Presumably, the day is really long, so if you're as honest as the day is long, it means you're really honest. I don't know why it's "day" and not something really long, like "year."
People are much more likely to say "this has been a really long day" (or week) than year. We think small. ;)