To be fair, it is hard to imagine that Teixeira, who just turned 30, is at his career midnight. But it’s starting to get late.

Oh for crying out loud.

But it’s starting to get late.

As Yogi Berra is supposed to have said: “It’s getting late early.”

His batting average is still .016 higher than I would like. It would be such a cool story if the 180 million dollar man hit below the Mendoza Line. Sometimes it looks like he's about to go on a hot streak and leave it behind for good. But then games like yesterday, futile enough for a platinum sombrero, rekindle the hopes that one of the most confounding seasons of all-time is possible.

God bless you, ESPN—"less than 100 RBIs", you guessed it, is exactly 98.

My instincts told me to take Miggy in my fantasy draft, due to his decision in the offseason to stop drinking. Seemed to portend a huge year. But I took Teixeira - better lineup around him and more valuable last season. Doh.

The only thing wrong with Texarkana is that he's on my fantasy team.

That sentence is also accurate if "Alex Rodriguez" is substituted for the object of the first preoposition.

Teixeira is not OK. He's more like 5K.

Bad start or no, he shouldn't bat third there any more. That should be Cano.

God bless you, ESPN—"less than 100 RBIs", you guessed it, is exactly 98.

And it should be "fewer than 100 RBIs." Sheesh.

Teixeira has always been a very streaky hitter. But him and that park could easily see a ton of homeruns flying out in rapid succession.

Somewhere Kevin Youkilis is chuckling.

the sample size is growing. i suppose May was 'good' (.840 OPS), but his 5 June games are in the crapper.

I've been sorting through Teixeira's game logs, and this is what I see:

1. This is clearly Teixeira's weakest start. He's a famously weak starter, of course, and there have been occasions before when his slump lasted into June -- his spring in Atlanta, most notably -- but it's never stayed this deep, this long. Usually he's got his OPS up over 800 on the season by now, even when he's not playing to norms. His ISO right now is .155; for his career it's .150; leaving out his rookie year and this year it's .159.

2. The most notable thing about this slump is how long the BA has stayed down, providing the illusion of an utter power outage. What seems to happen usually is that he bats .190 for a while, then his BA slowly creeps up to about .250, and around that time he starts going 3-for-4 a lot and drags all the rates up back towards where you want to see them. He's on pace for about 24 homers, which isn't up to his usual standards, but isn't that many fewer than he's hit in several seasons before.

3. He's K'ing a lot, but no more than last year, when he had 7 fewer Ks in 20 fewer PAs as of this date. In fact, in 2008, when he was K'ing way less, he had a much shallower early season slump but took forever to recover from it -- his SLG didn't pass .500 until late July that year.

4. The idea that he always STARTS slow isn't quite correct; sometimes he starts fine and slumps after a few weeks. A prominent example is 2006, when his OBP/SLG was at .409/.534 on 18 April -- 14 games into the season -- but then hit .252 / .342 / .370 over the next 31 games, at which point he bottomed out at a .362/.417 OBP/SLG. That month should look very familiar. 2006 was his worst season, mostly because it entailed that long malaise; after May 23, he was basically himself.

Tex is 30; it's not entirely out of the question that he's hit a wall and will never be the same again. That said, I don't see that he's doing anything utterly outside the realm of what he's done before. The major difference between this start and previous ones is just how bad he was in April -- that .136 BA is low even by Tex's early season standards. It strikes me as probable that this year will be akin to 2006, in which an exceptionally long slump leads to a tailoff in his final totals -- that year, his OPS+ at season's end was "only" 126. The next year it was 149.

Still the Blue Jays fear him enough to intentionally walk him to load the bases for A-Rod.

If only they'd feared Cano enough.

Bad start or no, he shouldn't bat third there any more. That should be Cano.

agreed, at some point in time in season stats should trump recent career stats. The guy(Corey Hart) leading the National League in homeruns batted seventh for his team yesterday. You just have to ride the hot streak and hope you are able to recognize when it's over.

God bless you, ESPN—"less than 100 RBIs", you guessed it, is exactly 98.

And it should be "fewer than 100 RBIs." Sheesh.

False. It's actually known who specifically made up this supposed "rule", and he did so out of thin air, contrary to the known actual usages of the phrases dating back literally over a thousand years.

Legions of sixth grade English teachers, and their more gullible students, then glommed onto the bandwagon, in an unfortunately somewhat successful attempt to further their inane agenda of pretending that there is an actual authoritative set of rules for language, other than actual usage itself.

That they do this annoys me; that they do it in instances like this, where their supposed "rule" is easily shown to be contrary to the reality of English for as long as there has even been such a thing as "English", pains me.

Fair enough. You don't have to be such a dick about it.

Oh, I know I don't have to be.

It's actually known who specifically made up this supposed "rule", and he did so out of thin air, contrary to the known actual usages of the phrases dating back literally over a thousand years.

Who is it?

Some guy.

Legions of sixth grade English teachers, and their more gullible students, then glommed onto the bandwagon, in an unfortunately somewhat successful attempt to further their inane agenda of pretending that there is an actual authoritative set of rules for language, other than actual usage itself.

While in this case I agree with you, and in general you have a good point, moral relativism in language has its limits.
Language is a tool, used with a purpose in mind, communication. Some use of language achieves this goal better than others. So while a philosophy of usage=meaning will tell you that if a phrase is commonly used it is by definition correct, it isn't necessarily a good use of language.

I am a very inarticulate person, so I'm sure I'm really fumbling with getting my point across.

"Unique" is probably the most obvious example (and I often bring it up just because I somehow managed to use it incorrectly 8 times in my thesis despite the fact it's the example I always use)
Most dictionaries now list "rare" as an alternative meaning of "unique", following the rule that people use it that way, so that's what it means.

But in my opinion that usage makes the English language less precise, more ambiguous and therefore it does a poorer job of fulfilling its job of communication. Taking two words that mean different things, and treating them like synonyms harms a language. I guess my point is, accepted usage is language, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to keep our language as accurate, precise and useful as possible.

For instance in reading 18th century documents I'm always struck by their use of words like "magnificent", "great", "wonderful" and others like them, as if they each had ther distinct meanings and connotations. Whereas currently they all seem pretty interchangeable in our language. It seems like, in this one case, their language was more descriptive than ours.

Who is it?

I'm guessing Will Carroll.

Who is it?

A man named Robert Baker.

As for "unique", the meanings that people typically complain about existed soon after its entry into English as a common word (the word existed in English in extremely rare usage, without those meanings, for a little while previously). This is often the case with words that people complain about supposedly "new" meanings of; they're often not "new" at all. It's just that some guy with a stick up his ass decided he didn't like some particular usage, and legions of misguided English teachers took that guy's word as gospel. This is the case with "less than"; it is the case with "unique"; it is the case with a huge number of words.

I will quote from the summary of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage's entry on this "unique":

What, then is the intelligent writer to make of unique? The evidence allows several definite conclusions. Those who insist that unique cannot be modified by such adverbs as more, most, and very are clearly wrong: our evidence shows that it can be and frequently is modified by such adverbs. Those who believe that the use of such modifiers threatens to weaken (or has already weakened) the "having no like or equal" sense of unique are also wrong: our evidence shows that the "having no like or equal" sense is flourishing. And those who regard the use of unique to mean "unusual" or "distinctive" as a modern corruption are emphatically wrong: unique has been used with those meanings for well over a hundred years.

The way that you used "unique" eight times is not the sickness in the English language. Rather, the sickness is the fact that someone misguidedly told you that you used "unique" incorrectly eight times.

Why can't people have started using the word incorrectly 100 years ago? Just because something's old wouldn't make it right, right?

(Note that I have no idea how old using "unique" to mean "rare" actually is.)

Merrian-Webster's is a dictionary created by linguist fascists to hoist their anti-intellectual agenda upon the world. To treat it as an authoritative voice is tautological since they consider any usage as legitimate usage.

Count me on Greg side. He is exactly right. The linguistic relativists are cultural barbarians. If unique doesn't mean unique then it doesn't mean anything. We might as well be grunting like apes.

And I'm not defending the idiotic rule that started this. I'd never heard of it before. Because I went to school in French I don't know a single rule of English grammar. This isn't about the grammar police. It is about the thin line between light and darkness.

I completely agree with Gaelan.

But I checked the OED. Of unique, it says

2. a. That is or forms the only one of its kind; having no like or equal; standing alone in comparison with others, freq. by reason of superior excellence; unequalled, unparalleled, unrivalled.
In this sense readopted from French at the end of the 18th c. and regarded as a foreign word down to the middle of the 19th, from which date it has been in very common use, with a tendency to take the wider meaning of ‘uncommon, unusual, remarkable’.
The usage in the comparative and superlative, and with advs. as absolutely, most, quite, thoroughly, totally, etc., has been objected to as tautological.

That implies that the word has been used to mean 'uncommon, unusual, remarkable' since the mid 19th century. Of course, that doesn't make the usage correct.

Why can't people have started using the word incorrectly 100 years ago? Just because something's old wouldn't make it right, right?

All of its modern usages existed almost immediately upon its entry into common English. And what do you mean by "incorrectly" in the first place?

Merrian-Webster's is a dictionary created by linguist fascists to hoist their anti-intellectual agenda upon the world. To treat it as an authoritative voice is tautological since they consider any usage as legitimate usage.

First of all, I didn't treat it as an authoritative voice. I quoted it.

Second, I am surprised that a linguistic prescriptivist such as yourself would use the word "fascist" in this obviously nonstandard sense. MW (and virtually every other dictionary) are the opposite of dictatorial and oppressive; they view their job as being to describe the language as it is, not the language as some random yahoo who took his sixth grade teacher too seriously thinks it should be. If anything, the vast majority of dictionaries (MW included) are linguistically liberal, not linguistically fascist.

If any dictionary can be described as "fascist", it's American Heritage, which was created specifically to combat what its founder saw as the horrible permissiveness of every other dictionary out there.

If unique doesn't mean unique then it doesn't mean anything. We might as well be grunting like apes.

Putting aside the strange circular reasoning of "if unique doesn't mean unique", this is obviously false, since, as noted, the word has had these meanings more or less ever since it was an English word (outside of extremely rare instances).

But even ignoring that, the whole premise strikes me as odd. Words having a single meaning are the exception, not the rule, to language. It's always been that way. The idea that a word means nothing if it means more than one thing is just silly.

And, as MW says, in this specific instance, it's much ado about nothing: the usage that you like is flourishing. Other usages have not harmed it.

Of course, that doesn't make the usage correct.

It also doesn't make it incorrect.

Well "having no like or equal" does not mean "uncommon, unusual, remarkable." So I'll stand by my original position. That's the whole problem with the usage mavens. They want to eradicate the distinctions between words.

Well "having no like or equal" does not mean "uncommon, unusual, remarkable." So I'll stand by my original position.

Perhaps you missed the part that referred to its use to mean "unusual" or "distinctive".

That's the whole problem with the usage mavens. They want to eradicate the distinctions between words.

The distinction between what and what? Unique and unique? The problem is not a desire to "eradicate the distinctions between words"; rather, the problem is a desire to pretend that words have unique meanings.

Second, I am surprised that a linguistic prescriptivist such as yourself would use the word "fascist" in this obviously nonstandard sense. MW (and virtually every other dictionary) are the opposite of dictatorial and oppressive; they view their job as being to describe the language as it is, not the language as some random yahoo who took his sixth grade teacher too seriously thinks it should be. If anything, the vast majority of dictionaries (MW included) are linguistically liberal, not linguistically fascist.

This is clever but it misrepresents my position. First, I'm not a prescriptivist. I am all in favour of people using language with flexibility. However in order for language to be used in that way it has to be with reference to a stable world of meaning. There is a great deal of difference between someone adapting a word to make a specific point and someone using a word out of ignorance. Moreover it's not true that the descriptivists just describe the way words are actually used. Descriptivism is an ideological agenda intent on pushing their view of the world upon civilization. The fact that their dogma is the dogma of equality doesn't make it any less dogmatic nor their viewpoint any less tyrannical.

The idea that a word means nothing if it means more than one thing is just silly.

I never said that. I completely agree. What I don't like is when words have no meaning at all.

This is clever but it misrepresents my position. First, I'm not a prescriptivist. I am all in favour of people using language with flexibility. However in order for language to be used in that way it has to be with reference to a stable world of meaning.

The specific word that you are complaining about has stably had the meanings that you are complaining about essentially ever since it was an English word.

What I don't like is when words have no meaning at all.

Such as what word?

Using "unique" when what you mean is "uncommon" is to use to use a word with no meaning rendering the sentence unintelligible. It cannot be plainer.

Everyone knows this. Imagine I'm talking to someone and they say "unique" when they could have said "uncommon." I gently correct them and say, "I think you meant uncommon." Are they going to say, "no, I meant unique." They aren't because both of us know that "unique" and "uncommon" do not mean the same thing no matter how common the usage of unique as uncommon has become.

Again, you are complaining that it has more than one meaning. You are not complaining that it has no meaning.

As for your example, it's just silly. The sentence wasn't "unintelligible"; you comprehended it perfectly, as witnessed by your immediate "correction".

Are they going to say, "no, I meant unique."

If they meant "uncommon", obviously they're not going to disagree with you when you say that you think they meant uncommon. This has no relevance to whether or not "unique" can be used in the same way as "uncommon".

They aren't because both of us know that "unique" and "uncommon" do not mean the same thing no matter how common the usage of unique as uncommon has become.

No; they aren't going to, but that's not why they aren't going to.

Lots of words have more than one meaning. Lots of words have other words that share meanings with them.

I think maybe another way to approach this is, why does the English language need one of the definitions of "unique" to be "uncommon"

Does it add to the language's ability to help us communicate?
Not especially

On the other hand, does it create potential confusion?
When someone is specifically saying something is one of a kind, and another can easily take it to mean they are saying it is just uncommon, or vice versa, that's a failure of language isn't it?

Lots of words have more than one meaning. Lots of words have other words that share meanings with them.

True, but usually within the context it's obvious which sense of the word is being used. If not, then I would argue that language is being ineffeciently used.

True, but usually within the context it's obvious which sense of the word is being used. If not, then I would argue that language is being ineffeciently used.

You've lived with multiple meanings of "unique" all your life. Are you genuinely flummoxed by them on a regular basis?

Of course you can come up with some scenario where it's used ambiguously; this is true of many, many words with multiple meanings. It is not (in any sense) unique to "unique".

I think the problem might be that I'm not so much making a correct/incorrect distinction, but a matter of precision, and whether language is doing its job.

Doesn't it make sense that it's better to have separate definitions of "unique" and "uncommon"?

Is it really better to live in a world where every time someone uses the word "unique" you have to ask them, "now, do you mean UNIQUE unique? or just rare unique?"

Doesn't it make sense that it's better to have separate definitions of "unique" and "uncommon"?

I genuinely don't see why this would be "better", no.

Is it really better to live in a world where every time someone uses the word "unique" you have to ask them, "now, do you mean UNIQUE unique? or just rare unique?"

Have you ever asked that question of someone? Let alone "had to"? Let alone "every time someone uses the word"?

You've lived with multiple meanings of "unique" all your life. Are you genuinely flummoxed by them on a regular basis?

It's not really a big deal, I've just never understood why it's an element of our language worth defending. Language is kind of important to us as humans. Why not try to make it into as efficient a tool as possible?

The specific word that you are complaining about has stably had the meanings that you are complaining about essentially ever since it was an English word.

No, it hasn't. OED says that the disputed use had been "increasingly common" since the mid C19. Instances of unique in English date to the early C17.

the use of "bad" to mean "really good" has also become increasingly common, as has use of "awesome" to mean "fun," but I would not countenance it in an essay by a student of mine except in a very limited set of circumstances. there's enough linguistic ambiguity and intellectual laziness in the world.

I wonder what a court would say would say about someone who sold a unique item on ebay and then advertised another of the same item and appealed to Webster.

Have you ever asked that question of someone? Let alone "had to"? Let alone "every time someone uses the word"?

No, but as I mentioned earlier it has been asked of me. The corrections in my thesis I mentioned earlier weren't just the whinings of some language nut. It was kind of important to the points I was making and my use of "unique" was ambiguous. For a person who was training to express ideas for a living it was 100% poor language.

No, it hasn't. OED says that the disputed use had been "increasingly common" since the mid C19. Instances of unique in English date to the early C17.

Oh, good lord. I've explicitly said multiple times in several posts throughout this thread things like the fact that it existed in English before having these meanings, but in extremely rare usage. And I've explicitly referred to its current meanings as being in English essentially ever since it entered English as a common word (rather than a rare and essentially foreign affectation), too. I apologize that I apparently didn't do this every single time that I spoke.

Oh, good lord. I've explicitly said multiple times in several posts throughout this thread things like the fact that it existed in English before having these meanings, but in extremely rare usage

Dude!
You missed a chance to make a pretty good joke there.
"but in extremely unique usage"

No, but as I mentioned earlier it has been asked of me. The corrections in my thesis I mentioned earlier weren't just the whinings of some language nut. It was kind of important to the points I was making and my use of "unique" was ambiguous. For a person who was training to express ideas for a living it was 100% poor language.

Without having actually seen what you wrote, I'll refrain from making assumptions about it. However, (A) generally speaking, "unique" causes no such problems, and the people who complain about its use aren't complaining because they don't understand what was meant; (B) ambiguity in language is the rule, not the exception; (C) the fact that it (or many other words) can be used ambiguously should not detract from your ability to write less ambiguously.

but in extremely unique usage

:)

Well, I think I've essentially said what I mean to say, so I will likely stop posting in this thread now, but I will leave you with an ironic quote about "unique" from a writer of a dictionary back before it had the meanings that people don't like:

In the 1818 edition of Johnson's Dictionary, Henry Todd included "unique", but as a "foreign word", and said that it was "useless".

A) I would argue is incorrect. In the case I was referring to I was mostly using the word to describe a 18th century Anglican clergyman, who, while not unique (in the singular sense), was atypical, and the most vocal of his atypical subgroup of 18th century Anglican clergymen. One of the points of my thesis was that there were a small group of clergymen like this. Therefore "unique" was 100% ambiguous. My editor genuinely did not now, was I suggesting that this clergyman was REALLY unique among his peers? Or was I saying he was just a part of this small group of rare clergymen? It was (correctly) suggested I avoid using such an ambiguous word as "unique"

B) True, but that's no reason to not strive to eliminate ambiguity from language. Language is flexible and adapts over time. But it isn't some flow beyond our control. We as humans adapt it. So why not strive to adapt it to be LESS ambiguous, MORE precise, BETTER at communicating our ideas clearly? Isn't that the point?

C) True, the use of the word "unique" is the least of my problems when it comes to my ability to write.

EDIT: I will bid you good evening as well, and thanks for the quote, reference books are always a good source for rye humour. I always enjoy a good back and forth over language...I usually learn a whole lot, and tonight was no exception, thanks.

So in 100 years or so a bunch dickheads are going to be sitting around their mother's subfloorite blinking away on their cerebraltype about how to correctly use the word truthiness. Awesome!

The rhetoric in this debate, especially Gaelan's, is delightfully overly dramatic. I mean, c'mon:

Descriptivism is an ideological agenda intent on pushing their view of the world upon civilization.

Really? Dictionary writers think that dictionaries influence the direction of "civilization"? That wouldn't make them ideological, it would make them insane.

He is exactly right.

What does this mean? How can one be "inexactly right"? In language, there is no gray (or grey) area between "right" and "wrong".

And what is the meaning of "exact" in a context which is not quantitative?

It is about the thin line between light and darkness.

See, I told you there was no gray area. But, since a line only exists in two dimensions, descriptive terms such as "thin" or "thick" are inappropriate. Unless you want to do something silly and consult a dictionary for imprecise, non-mathematical definitions.

Which brings us to ... what use is the word "unique" in its "correct" usage? Is anything "unique"? If something is "unique" is there, in fact, any danger that someone does not recognize it as "having no like or equal"? The "correct" definition is already redundant -- by definition, having no "like" means having no "equal". The fuzziness of "no like" is frustrating -- how much dissimilarity is required? How can we have precise definitions of words if we're going to use fuzzy concepts like "like" in our definitions?

After all, Steve Trachsel's career is unique -- just right off the bat, he is the only pitcher in MLB history with 2,501 career innings pitched. He's also the only one with 1,591 strikeouts. No other pitcher has a career record of 143-159.

So there is no "equal" for Steve Trachsel, he's unique. (You aren't one of those pansies who's going to resort to a wimpy "like" standard I hope.)

On the other hand, Babe Ruth isn't unique. Guys have more HRs, more RBI, more hits -- heck, Aaron's ahead in all three. Even Steve Trachsel has more wins and Barry Bonds is a mere .2 behind in career WAR (is this "like" enough?)

So I'll say that any word which allows me to call Steve Trachsel "unique" but Babe Ruth only "uncommon" has no useful meaning. :-)

Oh, darn, there's that "which" vs. "that" thing that I often get inexactly right.

The rhetoric in this debate, especially Gaelan's, is delightfully overly dramatic.

BBTF? Overly dramatic rhetoric? Surely not!

It was (correctly) suggested I avoid using such an ambiguous word as "unique"

So your editor was saying that "unique" has two meanings.

B) True, but that's no reason to not strive to eliminate ambiguity from language. Language is flexible and adapts over time. But it isn't some flow beyond our control. We as humans adapt it. So why not strive to adapt it to be LESS ambiguous, MORE precise, BETTER at communicating our ideas clearly? Isn't that the point?

You're no fun at parties are you? Granted, surely more fun than Gaelan! :-)

What is this striving for precision and efficiency? Keep your ####### hands off my double entendres!! Leave the great creative linguists -- Carroll, Joyce, Snoop Dogg -- alone! Little ####### Hemingways!

And you're dreaming if you think anybody today can teach "proper" language better than Sisters Augusta and Mary Margaret did and I can't even keep usage of "that" and "which" straight. And I was their best student -- sorry for disappointing you sisters! I'm sure I've got a lot of knuckle raps awaiting me in the afterlife.

I wish I could say this thread is one of a kind but I'm afraid I can't even say it's unique.

What is this striving for precision and efficiency? Keep your ####### hands off my double entendres!! Leave the great creative linguists -- Carroll, Joyce, Snoop Dogg -- alone! Little ####### Hemingways!

Maybe I'm entirely missing the point of Joyce, but the reason I love his writing so much is that he seems to be exploring language and trying to find ways to use it to more directly communicate with the human psyche.

Maybe I'm not clearly getting across what my position is. I'm not advocating adherence to some hard-line rules. I myself have no idea when it is appropriate to use "that" or "which" or know what the hell "whom" means. I'm the last person to know anything about the rules of English. I have no idea what a split infinitive is, and during my undergrad years my profs gave up getting me to fix comma splices.

I just think language is a tool. An important tool we use every day, so why all the resistance to someone saying, let's make it the best possible tool it can be? Sure language adapts and changes over time, its greatest strength is that it's flexible. But we're not passive agents in those adaptations. We adapt it. So why not try to adapt it in ways that make it serve its purpose better.

I'm not delusional enough to think that we can create some kind of perfect language utopia. But just because we can't create a language to understand one another perfectly doesn't mean we should give up trying to create a language where we understand one another better.

EDIT:
Re: unique having two meanings. It's not my point that there is only one meaning of unique. If the common usage is that there are two meanings of unique, then there are two meanings. My point isn't a matter of "correctness" it's a matter of which is a better language. If the purpose of language is to enable us to express ideas with clarity than I say a language with one definition of unique is the better language.

And I actually pride myself on being the life of parties!
I try to up the ante every year at my friend's New Years party, though last year my antics involved a snowhill, a thin piece of plastic, a metal pole and an emergency room. So maybe I should change my strategy next year.

Nope, wrong thread, this is one is much too high brow for the likes of me....

So in 100 years or so a bunch dickheads are going to be sitting around their mother's subfloorite blinking away on their cerebraltype about how to correctly use the word truthiness. Awesome!

More likely they'll be defending the validity of the word 'irregardless' by demonstrating its usage of 100 years past.

And I still don't see what the problem is with having a distinction between words. I agree that it's better to have unique mean 'one of a kind' instead of it simply being our 12th different word for 'rare.' I also don't see the problem with having a distinction between 'less' and 'fewer.' It usually sounds better to me.

or know what the hell "whom" means.

Whom is to who what him is to he.

He took out the garbage.
She called him. (not "she called he.")
Who took out the garbage?
She called whom? (not "she called who?")

so why all the resistance to someone saying, let's make it the best possible tool it can be?

cost/benefit analysis.

1. You're assuming it's an inefficient tool. Confusion between "unique" and "unique" doesn't often arise and, even when it does, almost never matters. In the end, does it really matter if your clergyman was the only one, one of a few, the most important of a few? How "efficient" is it to spend time and resources clarifying this minor confusion when it occurs? (now "inflammable" you have some argument for)

2. It's a fool's errand to try to make language more efficient. "We", as a collective, have no control over it whatsoever. And "we", not being anything remotely resembling a collective thank god, have no control over the collective. I'm just trying to save you some time. :-)

3. "Inefficient" just sounds like a polite way of saying "you don't talk right." (not that I take that as your meaning, just telling you what it sounds like.)

Who cares if language is "inefficient"? The efficiency of language may be even less important than 18th century Anglican clergymen. :-)

& wot cld b more efficient than txt spk?

If the purpose of language is to enable us to express ideas with clarity than I say a language with one definition of unique is the better language.

ooh, my choice of slippery slopes! "more efficient" = "better"? Or "only single definitions allowed"?

Language without dual/multiple meaning is no fun. I shudder to think how much humor we lose with unambiguous language. I'm pretty sure we lose the entire blues genre.

And my good friend hyperbole is dead in the water.

But please don't take my stance as resistance ... consider it good-natured ridicule. Feel free to tilt at your windmills (literally!) because I'm not the least bit concerned that anyone will ever succeed at controlling language. No matter how hard the language mavens, grammar nabobs and efficiency fascists work, hilaripus will be in the dictionary in 50 years.*

* c'mon, it's overly dramatic rhetoric thread, did anybody think I'd be able to resist playing along?

False. It's actually known who specifically made up this supposed "rule", and he did so out of thin air, contrary to the known actual usages of the phrases dating back literally over a thousand years.

Legions of sixth grade English teachers, and their more gullible students, then glommed onto the bandwagon, in an unfortunately somewhat successful attempt to further their inane agenda of pretending that there is an actual authoritative set of rules for language, other than actual usage itself.

That they do this annoys me; that they do it in instances like this, where their supposed "rule" is easily shown to be contrary to the reality of English for as long as there has even been such a thing as "English", pains me.

This version is rather misleading. Robert Baker did express the opinion that "less" and "fewer" had different meanings, but this was based on his observation of how language was used by others around him, and especially the way that the best writers used it. He didn't make it up "out of thin air." And he stated it as his opinion about how to write with precision and elegance, not as a dictate handed down from on high. In other words, it's a practical suggestion for using a tool (language) effectively. The fact that many have followed his suggestion might perhaps indicates that it had some merit; he persuaded others that he had a good point. By the time "legions of sixth grade English teachers" had started teaching this usage to "gullible students," several dozen decades had passed, as Baker's book Remarks on the English Language was published in 1770. So the writers he was studying were people like Addison and Johnson. He says in the Preface to the book that he's not sure if all his findings are correct, and he invites his readers to offer corrections: "What Errors I have been guilty of I shall be glad to have pointed out to me; and wherever I am convinced of a Mistake, I will not fail to recant, should my Book pass through a second Edition." So it was basically an effort to create a guide to the best usage by looking empirically at how the best writers were actually using language, and it was subject to the norms of Enlightenment-era print culture in which ideas were evaluated on their merits. Anyone who read the book could criticize his opinions and offer their own in response. Baker was not an elite pundit in any case; in fact he mentions that he didn't attend university and knew little Latin, but learned his grammar and usage by reading a lot.

Think about it: the distinction Baker noticed between "less" and "fewer" is parallel to that between "much" and "many." How would it sound to you if someone said "We don't have many time left!" or "There haven't been much runs scored in this game." Since this logical distinction already exists in English, I don't see why someone would find it so implausible in the pair of words that are negative complements to "much" and "many."

meh, nevermind, figured it out.

Still want tex to get better so the Yanks don't buy Pujols.

WTF does 90% of this b!+chfest of a thread have to do with Mark Teixeira?

Really? Dictionary writers think that dictionaries influence the direction of "civilization"? That wouldn't make them ideological, it would make them insane.

I can only imagine what this makes Sabermatricians.

Okay having read the entire post I have to commment on this.

"Why can't people have started using the word incorrectly 100 years ago? Just because something's old wouldn't make it right, right?"

Because it goes back to Will’s original pt: That the only real guide you have is how the word is being used by people in the streets or people around you or just other people. Unless your French or something and you try to legislate how people can use words. Barring that, what other way is there? The dictionary itself does this very thing by adding new words every year.

Do you recall year’s word of the year: Unfriend. How hip do you have to be to use that word? Get the pt? It's changing every day every minute.

****

Really Willcarrol and this entire discourse, got off on the wrong foot quite early and then led to a non sensical side issue. It started when Gaelen or Gregg said:


‘I think the problem might be that I'm not so much making a correct/incorrect distinction, but a matter of precision, and whether language is doing its job. Doesn't it make sense that it's better to have separate definitions of "unique" and "uncommon"?”

(See Wil’s rather mild reply in post 39) Right then instead of trying to be reasonable he should have just stomped right down your throat and shouted:

NO I AM NOT CHANGING ANY MEANING; I am MODIFYING THE WORD WITH ANOTHER WORD. Is there anybody that doesn’t understand that when you modify a word you don’t change its meaning?


Really I totally detest/cannot understand people who have a bug up their ass about modifying the word unique; when you question them as to the basis, they cannot explain whether it is wrong on logical grounds (it makes no sense to modify that which is one of a kind) or whether there is some dumb grammar rule (you just cant do it.

For example, the OED quoted in post 27 suggests the logical argument (it would be a tautology)

But the problem is there are tons of words just like that are modified like this;

Near fatal.
Almost finished
Almost complete.
Near crash
Nearly done.
Almost ended.
Almost passed the exam.
Almost at the end.
Nearly dishonest
Almost valid.
almost melted.
almost won the race
nearly died.

Am I to understand that all these usages are not logical?
Am I to understand that if we use these modifiers, then the words somehow have two meanings?

Look how inane the thread gets, post 41:

“the use of "bad" to mean "really good" has also become increasingly common, as has use of "awesome" to mean "fun," but I would not countenance it in an essay by a student of mine except in a very limited set of circumstances. there's enough linguistic ambiguity and intellectual laziness in the world.”

Really the poster cannnot contain himself in mentioning that he is a teacher. That is rich!

Argument is totally out of context, totally intellectually dishonest, missing the pt completely. He didn’t change the word unique to mean it’s exact opposite, he took the given meaning and modified that with ANOTHER WORD.

Look at post 53 here we go again, we are still on this red herring:

”EDIT: Re: unique having two meanings. It's not my point that there is only one meaning of unique. If the common usage is that there are two meanings of unique, then there are two meanings. My point isn't a matter of "correctness" it's a matter of which is a bla bla bla….”

Hello? There’s no two meanings involved.

Post 57 continues with this two meanings nonsense...

You want a word that's being misused? YOu reall want one?

Literally. Now there's one that is just abused:

"Camden Yards was literally exploding with home runs last night." (from actual local news)

No it wasnt.

"In his days at Univ of GA, Herschel Walker literally ran himself into the headlines." (soem retro show on ESPN or something

No He didnt.

I preferred this thread being about how much Teixeira sucked.

It was obviously the cheap shot on that catcher that broke him.

There's nothing wrong with wishing that each word had less meanings and was only used in its uniquest sense, but its only a wish.

I think that the debate over "unique" reflects a confrontation between logic and the real world. Every baseball player is unique, except maybe for the Canseco twins, and even they had certain distinguishing features. But in practice Jason Botts is a heck of a lot like Chris Davis, and Ichiro Suzuki is like nobody else. So it's actually practical enough to say, allowing for scale, that Ichiro is a lot more unique than Botts. But nobody adds that qualifier "allowing for scale" every time they use the word. It's sort of assumed, as a rough practical guide. I will stand up for the uniqueness of my Honda Civic against all others, but if a Delorean comes into the parking lot I will have to admit that it makes all the little hatchbacks look similar. It's unique in that context.

I'm still not buying that there's anything wrong with modifying unique, no matter how much of usage maven one fancies oneself. Let's say that I'm a HS science teacher writing college recommendations, and I had once written of George that "among this year's class, he has a unique ability to grasp complex concepts." OTOH, when I write of Harold I say, "among all students that I have ever taught, he has a unique ability to grasp complex concepts." Is Harold not more unique than George? Is George not less unique than Harold?

And I thought I was a grammer nerd.

There's nothing wrong with wishing that each word had less meanings and was only used in its uniquest sense, but its only a wish.

You're begging the question.

I don't get where Walt thinks that I, or anyone else, is opposed to ambiguity of language. The point is that there is a difference between ambiguity arising out of subtlety and nuance and ambiguity that arises out of ignorance. For instance, ironic language is intentionally ambiguous. The definition of irony is when the literal and figurative meaning of a word is opposite. Or, if you prefer, when the actual and intended meaning are opposite. Thus, in order for there to be irony, and hence ambiguity, there has to be an actual meaning to play off of. It is the descriptivists who want to remove ambiguity from language by saying that words can mean any damn thing the speaker wants them to mean. The irony is that this doesn't happen because words don't have any meaning for the speaker and so they choose them at random. The descriptivists claim to be liberal in their description of language but what they describe is a prison in which automata repeat mischosen phrases automatically and without thought.

WTF does 90% of this b!+chfest of a thread have to do with Mark Teixeira?

Who?

False. It's actually known who specifically made up this supposed "rule", and he did so out of thin air, contrary to the known actual usages of the phrases dating back literally over a thousand years.

Utterly ####### irrelevant.

The AP Stylebook says it, I believe it & that settles it.

(And AFAIK, ESPN should be following AP as well.)

It is the descriptivists who want to remove ambiguity from language by saying that words can mean any damn thing the speaker wants them to mean

I think that descriptivism is the realization that words do mean any damn thing that groups of speakers and listeners (not just individual Humpty Dumptys) want them to mean. They simply do; you can't do much about it, unless there's a strong social/cultural interest at work, and in the case of "unique," there really isn't.

The AP Stylebook says it, I believe it & that settles it.

And from whence, pray tell, does the AP Stylebook's authority derive?

This is what I find particularly annoying about prescriptivists. The way they speak about usage of which they disapprove--"ignorant", "intellectually lazy", "wrong", etc--makes it sound like these "errors" are akin to getting basic facts about, say, chemistry or history wrong. When pushed, however, they normally retreat to vague claims about efficiency or aesthetics, since, of course, unlike history or chemistry there is no convention-independent truth that one is attempting to track. Even granting that their preferred usage is efficiency enhancing, or more aesthetically pleasing--which is more than a little dubious--this obviously comes nowhere close to justifying the kind of rhetoric that gets thrown around.

And from whence, pray tell, does the AP Stylebook's authority derive?

Admit it, you said "from whence" on purpose.

from whence, pray tell, does the AP Stylebook's authority derive?

Some farcical aquatic ceremony?

Descriptivists don't mind whether or not you choose to use "unique" in any particular way, Galean. They're not telling you to do anything. They're merely describing what people do. I'm pretty confident that the editors of Merriam-Webster are perfectly content with the fact that you choose to use "unique" only in a particular way.

This whole "descriptivism is tyranny" or "fascism" thing you've got in your head is just absurd.

This whole "descriptivism is tyranny" or "fascism" thing you've got in your head is just absurd.

And I didn't even go on about the link between the tyranny of descriptivism and instant replay. You'd probably say that was absurd too.

Do people actually use "unique" as a synonym for "uncommon"? I realize people often put modifiers in front of "unique", but I don't think that is technically incorrect or that it means people are using the word as a synonym for "uncommon".

Anyway, I don't understand why we'd need another word that means the same thing as "uncommon" or "rare". And it is useful to have a single word that unambiguously means "one-of-a-kind".

And it is useful to have a single word that unambiguously means "one-of-a-kind".

'Singular'? 'Nonesuch' if you're feeling cocky? This thread is singularly nerdariffic!

Certainly, we could use less threads as unique as this.

Certainly, we could use less threads as unique as this.

Nay, good sir! We could use more of these.

And from whence, pray tell, does the AP Stylebook's authority derive?

You're delving into matters of theology here. In my admittedly warped worldview, the Bible has no more validity than, say, Lord of the Rings, but AP ... well, AP is not to be questioned.*

Admit it, you said "from whence" on purpose.

One can only hope.


*Once upon a time I would've harbored similar faith in the Chicago Manual of Style, but I was shaken to the core to discover the edition -- dim memory tells me it was the 8th, though I could be confusing it with some version or other of Webster's -- I bought in 1981 showed "IWW" as standing for "International Workers of the World." The horror, the horror ...

reference books are always a good source for rye humour

Maybe to an ergotist ...

"Almost unique" does not mean "almost uncommon."

Singular is rather ambiguous as to whether it is something that has one part, or singular vs plural or..?