'The word pedants' top 10 | It's specific, not Pacific...' blog discussion.

jennyjelly

Paul_Varjak wrote: »

So, how come December is the twelfth month and October the tenth month?

Because September used to be the 7th month, October the 8th, November the 9th and December the 10th until the calendar changed from Gregorian to Julian and July and August were added, shuffling all the others along.

abby1234519

KimYeovil wrote: »

Good grief! I'll ignore the 'grammer' and the 'Its' on the probability of both being deliberate (or just typos). But please say you do know that that first sentence should be "I am just too lazy to type can not."

Well I cannot be bothered to work out which one I am supposed to use on an internet forum, at university I proofread with my "assistant" so I would hope I submit perfectly corrected work!

I am trying very hard not to abbreviate everything right now, eg I'm, don't etc. It is a struggle

According to the entry in the OED, cannot is

the ordinary modern way of writing can not

Paul_Varjak

jennyjelly wrote: »

Because September used to be the 7th month, October the 8th, November the 9th and December the 10th until the calendar changed from Gregorian to Julian and July and August were added, shuffling all the others along.

My question was really rhetorical. DECIMATED may have been used to indicate one-tenth, but dictionary defintions of words do change. That is why I compared to the months December/October; December is no longer the tenth month, but not quite for the reasons you stated.

Both the Julian and Gregorian calendars have 12 months and the Julian Calendar was superseded by the Gregorian calendar, not Julian replacing the Gregorain Calendar.

March use to be the first month of the year, in the Old Roman calendar, but then January and February were introduced and January 1st was made the beginning of the year.

etruscanshades

jennyjelly wrote: »

Is it? I thought it was just a case of using the wrong word and 'dander' is the only correct one.

Must google it now or I won't sleep tonight!

1) Someone's in for a severe goosing!

2) I wonder what a dander is?

3) Perhaps its just a case of false teeth going missing.

4) I wonder why we say "Take a gander" when we mean "Take a look"?

etruscanshades

Oh! Dander is dandruff! Eew! What an odd way to say one is seriously annoyed.

etruscanshades

From the Dictionary of Idioms:-

"Take a Gander" This slangy idiom, dating from the early 1900s, presumably came from the verb gander, meaning "stretch one's neck to see," possibly alluding to the long neck of the male goose.

So there.

ViolaLass

It's spelled 'naive'. It's French and if you spoke French, you would understand that that spelling makes complete sense. Since you don't, please don't spell it 'nieve'.

juno

ViolaLass wrote: »

It's spelled 'naive'. It's French and if you spoke French, you would understand that that spelling makes complete sense. Since you don't, please don't spell it 'nieve'.

I remember it as Evian backwards.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

Again, without reading through the thread to see if it's been mentioned, it irks when I see certain mathematical issues wrongly worded. However, it may have become so endemic that it is now regarded as correct.
I refer to, for instance, a sentence that reads,
"Mortgage lending is three times less than it was three years ago."
Surely this is a mathematical impossibility.
I would say,
"Mortgage lending is one third of what it was three years ago."

Flyboy152

etruscanshades wrote: »

Nope! goodness' = belonging to goodness. As countess' = belonging to countess, and James' = belonging to James, and hostess' = belonging to hostess.

If you are saying that usage has changed since I was taught this at school, then there you go! All the pedantic complaints in the last 25 pages may also be ignored.

This was never the case, unless things changed after I went to school. Placing the apostrophe after the "s" denotes the plural possessive. For example, we do not say, "Countess," for the singular possesive, do we? We say, "Countesses." In fact, the apostrophe was created for that very purpose; to replace the "e." If you write "James'," it denotes there is something owned by several people called Jame.