Re: USAGE : English past tense and participle in -et
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, December 28, 2003, 2:25 |
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On Sat, Dec 27, 2003 at 08:59:38PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> Indeed, when I first saw "whinge", on the Net, I thought it was a mere
> typo for "whine".
Ditto.
> There is a discussion of "alright" going on in a parallel universe
> *very* close to this one....
Good analogy; the cases are quite similar. And I should point out
that it was not I who objected vehemently to the spelling "alot"; in
informal contexts, it's fine. My objection is to the claim that
it is anything more than an alternate spelling of "a lot".
Even in my more prescriptive moods, I find "alright" a teeny bit more
acceptable than "alot", and indeed the former even appears in my
dictionary while the latter does not. Tellingly, its only "definition"
is that it is an alternate spelling of "all right".
-Mark
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