Patricia, What students consistently fail to understand is that meaning is dynamic, often determined by context, syntax and diction – in other words, they do not see the dictionary as a compendium of concepts as well as a lexicon. Thus they have no interest in “reading” the dictionary, reading it as a collection of ideas as well as the codes we use to express those ideas. Worse, I insist they use the OED for everything, and invariably they’ll read the entry quickly, stopping at the first meaning, even if it’s labeled OBS. I could go on, but you get the point: working so much online, working with electronic tools only, looking for the quick fix or the “right” answer (when, of course, there is no single solution), leads them into the land of malapropisms, misconstrued meanings, metaphors so mixed and mangled the reader is tortured trying to parse them, finally (and this is the real crime for me), they are constantly offering me their impressions of something because they will not take the time to find the language they need to describe or explain the thing they have to say clearly, precisely, elegantly. Still, I shouldn’t complain. I have a wonderful day job for a writer, and the truth is I learn something new about language with every class I teach. Now if we can just eliminate those faculty meetings…. Michael From: xywrite-bounce@xxxxxxxx [mailto:xywrite-bounce@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Patricia M Godfrey Michael, Ye gads, yes. Absolutely horrendous. I'm trying to write a book (well, it will probably end up a long PDF) on English grammar (parts of speech, inflections, rules of concord), syntax, etymology, etc, since I'm probably the last person alive to know any of it. (Oops! Sorry, Robert, I was forgetting you're younger than I.) You would not believe the mess the teachers in our town high school make of the apostrophe. C. S. Lewis has an amusing story about a British secondary school student who was asked to explain "Is Brutus sick and is it physical/To walk about and suck up the [something] of the dank morning?" (Quoting from memory, which fails me, and I don't leave my system unattended when I'm online). The kid came up with the modern sense of "mental"="mad," then posited that "physical" must mean "sane." Lewis pointed out that if the etymological history were lost (i.e., no OED), we'd probably accept that as a very likely explanation. Patricia |