Re: file searching/vista help

[Paul Lagasse pglagasse@xxxxxxxx]

Patricia M. Godfrey wrote:
> Paul Lagasse wrote:
> > Being more a descriptivist than not, I have no problem with someone
> > using willy-nilly to mean "in an unplanned manner," or for a dict. to
> > admit that that usage exists without using "erron." -- and in common
> > usage I think Random House is probably right: "sloppily" or
> > "haphazard" (Web10) is now the first sense for most Americans.
> The problem with such changes (even a prescriptivist like me
> acknowledges that changes in meaning can take place, and some are even
> useful) is that
> 1) the new meaning flat out contradicts the etymological one; and
Etymology is destiny, eh. (Though I don't think flat out contradiction
is what's happened to willy-nilly, if I'm not required to be literal.
All the senses involve some notion of the loss of proper control, of the
inability or failure of the will to function as it should. Nolens
volens, shilly-shally, in an unplanned manner, as if one had no
functioning will.)
> 2) it too often results in the creation of a new synonym for a sense
> for which English already had plenty of words or phrases, while a word
> that was unique in meaning what it did is no longer recognized in that
> sense. If we let "willy-nilly" mean sloppily, what do we use if we
> need to translate nolens volens? The same holds true for the common
> misuse of "comprise" as a useless synonym for "compose, constitute,
> make up, go to make," leaving us with no single word that means "to
> include totally." C. S. Lewis called it verbicide, and I agree.
Well, to translate nolens volens, one can always resort to "willingly or
unwillingly". No one will mistake that. After all, nolens volens isn't
one word.
"erron." aside, in the common American speech, I think that the old
sense of willy-nilly is being lost, and won't be recaptured. Eventually Obs.
Verbicide is an old English tradition. Eden may have been the last place
where the dream of the correspondence of words and things had any
reality, but mongrel English is and has long been a messy, messy
language. I kinda like the mess.


Paul Lagasse