Word use poll

[Jonathon]

I'm curious about the connotations of the word "admonish". Some of the uses I've come across in something I've been editing have seemed a little off to me, and I'm wondering if it's just me.

[BlackBlade]

I feel like rebuke or reprimand is too strong for what admonish feels like to me. Admonish feels like what you do to remind somebody of how they need to be, but you don't perceive any sort of rebelliousness on their end (If there was, rebuke).

But if you agreed to meet me for dinner, if I called you to remind you of the appointment, I don't feel like that fits admonishing.

[Annie Subjunctive]

Hmm, I went with the second choice and then looked it up on Merriam-Webster to see how I did. It looks like it can mean all of those, though.

[dkw]

If it were used to mean reminding someone of an obligation I think it has the implication that they were't going to fulfill the obligation.  Likewise encouraging them to do something good that they should be doing but look to be slacking on.  And when used to refer to a rebuke there's the implication that the bad deed can be corrected.  It definitely has the sense of urging a change of course, to me, in all three of those uses.

[Jonathon]

I don't think my poll was very well worded, but I think your response hit the nail on the head, dkw: I think admonish carries the idea that the person being admonished is being corrected in some way. Like if I admonished you to watch a certain TV show, it implies that you should have been watching it but weren't. But I keep seeing it used as a simple synonym for urge or encourage, which seems a little odd to me.

[BlackBlade]

I don't think my poll was very well worded, but I think your response hit the nail on the head, dkw: I think admonish carries the idea that the person being admonished is being corrected in some way. Like if I admonished you to watch a certain TV show, it implies that you should have been watching it but weren't. But I keep seeing it used as a simple synonym for urge or encourage, which seems a little odd to me.

Hmmm, I think I might have been using it incorrectly. I just went through the scriptures and virtually every use of admonish has to do with correcting and rebuking.

[Annie Subjunctive]

And, I just realized I was confusing it with "exhort." Ha ha! I went to look it up in the scriptures I was remembering it from and realized that they didn't use "admonish" at all.

[Porter]

My response, before reading others:

To me, it means to encourage, leaning toward plead for somebody to do something that they should do.

So, all of the options fit.

[Jonathon]

I don't think my poll was very well worded, but I think your response hit the nail on the head, dkw: I think admonish carries the idea that the person being admonished is being corrected in some way. Like if I admonished you to watch a certain TV show, it implies that you should have been watching it but weren't. But I keep seeing it used as a simple synonym for urge or encourage, which seems a little odd to me.

Hmmm, I think I might have been using it incorrectly. I just went through the scriptures and virtually every use of admonish has to do with correcting and rebuking.

I'm not sure I'd say you're using it incorrectly. At the very least, it appears that the neutral or positive sense of admonish (meaning simply 'urge' or 'encourage') is pretty frequent in LDS general conference talks.

[dkw]

Say rather that you are using it in an LDS*-specific way.

*culture

[BlackBlade]

If I am using it in such a way that 99.9% of English speakers would be unduly confused by it, and I am not recognizing my audience fully when I use it I've been using it wrong.

I will probably switch to using it as a synonym for rebuke or correcting.

[Jonathon]

If I am using it in such a way that 99.9% of English speakers would be unduly confused by it, and I am not recognizing my audience fully when I use it I've been using it wrong.

It's possible to use a word in such a way that 99.9% of English speakers won't understand it, but your audience will. The fact that not every English speaker understands a particular use doesn't make it wrong, especially when you consider that American English speakers account for a little over half of all English speakers worldwide.

[BlackBlade]

Right, but how I was using it, combined with my not being sensitive to audience at all leads me to that conclusion.

I've got plenty of words for kindly reminding somebody to do something. I don't have a lot for a something short of a rebuke or censure, so I'll put admonish there.

[Jonathon]

Out of curiosity, what audience are you using "admonish" with besides an LDS one?

[BlackBlade]

Out of curiosity, what audience are you using "admonish" with besides an LDS one?

Anybody really. I think it's one of those words where my brain might just suggest it, and I'd use it in a sentence.

[pooka]

It means "warn toward", rather than the usual sense of warning someone away from something.  But that's the old Latin bone.  I'd only use it in daily speech in a humorous sense.  Prophets can use it because, well, they're prophets.