11.13.08
Forwardly progressing progress in a progressively positive direction, progressingly
. . . or, “Maybe She Should Join the Progressive Party”
Because my friend JohnnyB over at Late for the Sky is bothered by lists of random thoughts in blogs, I will honor his disdain by a list of recent random unthoughts—unthoughts unthunked when using the language:
- Top of the list is one linguistically ungifted governor of Alaska. I know. Taking potshots at Gov. Palin’s syntactical discombulations is like shooting wolves in a barrel, but there are times when I should consider retitling this blog “Everything Sarah Palin Knows About English Is Wrong.” The latest:
I would be happy to get to do whatever is asked of me to help progress this nation.
I would ask her to help progress the language by not using progress as a transitive verb. Though such use has a history, progress-as-transitive is awkward and has no unique function, in that we have a number of synonyms that do the job better. And speaking of history, here’s an Oxford English Dictionary citation that meta-defines the word (from 1814): “Nor have there been wanting projects among them [”them” being us Americans] for getting rid of the English language, not merely by barbarizing it—as when they progress a bill . . .”
- This headline appeared on a Washington Post story about scalping Inauguration tickets: “Trying to Keep Inaugural Tickets Priceless.” The Post means free, of course, as priceless means “so valuable that price cannot be determined”—or in the phrasing of the MasterCard commercials, “because there are some things money can’t buy.” In fact, I first thought the headline was an attempt at snowcloning the long-time MasterCard campaign, but the story contains no other evidence of such a connection. The Washington Post—50 cents. Using the right word—priceless.
- And, yeah, it’s time to change the name of the blog. From the Wolf Blitzer interview:
Now is the time to move on and to, again, make sure that all of us are doing all that we can to progress this nation . . . Now is the time to move forward together, start progressing America.
Priceless.
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