pâté v. pate

context is everything

Discreet or discrete?

Take the phrase "she wiped her mouth discretely". Now look at the definition of "discrete":


And "discreet":


So:
"The man was discreetly removed."

Remember:
* [dis]Crete is an island, seperate; and
* discreet is the opposite of ostentatious.

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"Revert"

I first noticed this word being used to mean "refer back to" or "reply" in emails from Indian colleagues. India has a number of delightfully anachronistic English words still in use (such as the online article I read about how the "cads" had gotten away, but the "sleuths" were on their tail), which always amused me, but "please revert" at the end of an email...? My muttered response was usually, "to what?"

According to Dictionary.com:



Lately, it's been used twice by people who should know better, so I thought I would point it out.

It might be an actual word, but in this context it's like "refudiate" - yes, I know what you meant, but no. Don't.

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[REVIEW] "Kronos" by Jeremy Robinson: 2*/5

Sea monster swallows girl. Father (marine biologist) vows revenge & goes to sea a-huntin'. Unscrupulous billionaire funds chase.


Sea monster = Jonah's giant fish? Sea monster holds key to immortality? -- explains evil rich guy's interest.


Oh, wait, daughter still alive "in the belly of the beast". Blah blah love interest. Blah blah evil rich guy's evil henchman. Sea monster is intelligent, fights back. Evil rich guy's pet great white shark (only lacking the "frickin' lasers") eats various people as they fall off the boat. God talks to daughter. Sea monster provides daughter with fish & oxygen. Fake priest working for evil rich guy helps father & love interest overcome evil rich guy & henchmen. Clichés further ensue. Navy rescues father, love interest. Sea monster blerchs up daughter on beach, communes with father, escapes back to sea. Sigh.

There is too much editorialising and - while horror / monster stories are supposed to stretch the bounds of reality - far too implausible a story. From the dad's "grrr, my girl got et by a monster, I will hunt it down and kill it" response to the daughter's "we have to move to this house because I saw it in a vision while inside the beastie" to the love interest being the existing owner of said house... it's too much.

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Oops

Poor proofreading can change your message completely. These were featured on Leno, but I promise they're still worth a look.

Arizona, maybe?


Gee up, Bessie!


Grandma's gettin' frisky.


Maybe that's a fancy name for the mud-wrap ladies...?


LASIK: fix your eyes, age 25 years, and get extensions. We're a muti-purpose service.


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Vocabulary word of the day: "misprision"

This was a new one for me.

In a Huffington Post article about police shooting civilians in New Orleans, post-Katrina, this paragraph:


I hadn't ever seen that word before, so I went to dictionary.com and found:






In simple terms, official cover-up. So there you are. We learn something new every day.

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Badly worded charity ads

Recently, we received this in the mail:



At first glance, this appears to be an innocent request for money for cancer research, BUT!! Then there is this bit:


So... support the youth cancer centre and we will make sure that from now on, adults will have a better chance of surviving cancer than kids. It's only fair.

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Communication is everything

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[Pet Hate] "shot dead" @newsaustralia

Just watching the Channel 9 afternoon news, and the story about the Chang killer being deported to Malaysia. In summary, the newsreader said, "when Victor Chang was shot dead".

This is one of the phrases which always leads to me shouting at the TV.

Technically, he was either shot when he was already dead, or he died as a result of being shot. It's a curiously unique usage, as no one is ever "knifed dead" or "drowned dead".

It's sloppy, at best.

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When Lost & Tangled in Your Own Sentence...

...check your punctuation.

From Shadowplay, by Tad Williams:

He felt he would carry her memory even into the darkest house, [...] but all, the other things that he had been taught were so important had been were revealed to be only beads on a fraying string.

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Typo irony

If you're going to make fun of someone else's typo, read and re-read your own post:



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Connotation is Important

In a recent news story about a schlub who was blackmailing women online, the following:



"implored"?


No. "persuaded"? "convinced"?

Definitely not "implored".

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We Take This Job Very Seriously

Only the Truly Committed Need Apply...


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Tautology

Issue: In a news article: "Shortly before 3 a.m. that morning".

Explanation of terminology: "a.m." (or "am" or "AM" or "A.M.") in relation to time, stands for "ante meridian", or "before noon", or "in the morning". Conversely, "a.m." (or "am" or "AM" or "A.M.") stands for "post-meridian", or "after noon".

Example: "the altercation took place at 9am in the morning" -- "9am in the morning" = "9 in the morning, in the morning".

This must stop. It's quite grating.

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Dear 3 Mobile: I Hate Your Sucky "Customer Service".

I'm picking on 3 because I spent "2 minutes" (*8.5) enduring that godawful theme song about all the things in the world that come in threes (guess what? There's lots. And apparently my telco is claiming for itself all the juicy goodness of triangles, trinities, a couple with a child, tripods, tricycles... you get the idea. Its saccharine sweet presentation is also enough to make me bleed from the eyes after about 2 minutes, 6.5 minutes less than I was on hold), but really it's all of those big companies that have outsourced their "Customer Service".



Why?

Why doesn't the person I'm talking to understand Australian idioms?

Why do I have to speak slowly and clearly even when I'm really REALLY cranky, just so the person "helping" me can follow along?

Why doesn't the person I'm talking to know that in Australia it's not polite to JUST KEEP TALKING when one's Customer, whom one is Serving, is attempting to speak?

Why do I have to translate the odd speech inflections in order to understand the person on the other end of the phone?




I have travelled extensively and have lived and worked my entire life in multicultural contexts. I have no issues with other human beings based on skin colour, country of origin, ethnicity or appearance. I don't give a rat's arse whether the person on the other end of the phone is purple and their call centre is on Neptune. AND YET... I still struggle sometimes. How much worse is it for people who've never travelled?


You know what I do care about? That in my own country, I should not have to be aware of another country's cultural and linguistic nuances in order to GET SOME CUSTOMER SERVICE for an Australian-based product.


That's all I want.

Without caring whether it's been outsourced to India, Pakistan, Malawi, Guatemala, Canada or Antarctica:

bring Australian Customer Service back to Australia

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