I think idiomatic expressions are the same as words in being building blocks of the language, only on another construction level. If you don't know them, however dead they may be, you don't know something: you might miss a joke, a dialectal nuance, etc etc.
But they weren't the subject of my concern in particular. I should have been more clear about this. Orwell's list acted merely as a gauge: when someone gives you a list of overworn formulas and you don't know half of it, there's a helluva lot you don't know about the language.
But what am I gonno do. So be it. I'm already over it. I'll learn what I'll learn.
(Correction: construction level --> constructional level)
@Færd My interpretation of is complaint seems to be quite different. He seems to be complaining that the dying tropes are not interpreted with the literal understanding of what was meant by the figure of speech before they were considered as idioms to evoke the thoughts that made them so popular.
Thus a masterfully crafted concept becomes nothing more than just another word as far as most people are concerned, and a thoughtlessly used one at that.
@mitch I hadn't noticed your comment before making my own. I suppose I should have realized that a topic about preferences would be considered P.O.B., even though it's probably asking about a consensus rather than a personal opinion. Also, I'm glad to see you consider me and Jasper's comparison of dictionaries extensive, although I would personally consider my own research quite modest.
However, I would also like to note you are slightly mistaken on a point of fact. Noah Webster's "first" dictionary was A Compendious Dictionary of The English Language published in 1806. My preference is fo…
Also, when I say it was the last dictionary he made, it should probably was actually published post mortem. He died in 1843, sometime after finishing up an appendix.
@cerberus I'm reading some of the preliminary articles in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 1st edition again. It quotes Horace's Ars Poetica: "usus, Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi." It provides an unattributed translation, also found in Popular Science Monthly, Vol 76 from 1910, in the article The Growth of a Language by Dr. Charles W. Super. I was wondering how accurate it is. The provided translation is is follows:
Yes, words long faded may again revive, And words may fade, now blooming and alive, If usage wills it so, to whom belongs The rule, the law, the government of tongues.
> I labor to be concise, I become obscure: nerves and spirit fail him, that aims at the easy: one, that pretends to be sublime, proves bombastical: he who is too cautious and fearful of the storm, crawls along the ground: he who wants to vary his subject in a marvelous manner, paints the dolphin in the woods, the boar in the sea. The avoiding of an error leads to a fault, if it lack skill.
@Cerberus 'tis a shame that the link to the University of Chicago website on that webpage is broken. It also brings back painful memories of ARTFL Project. I used to link to them frequently in my answers for verification's sake. Thankfully I had the foresight to duplicate links to other sources in most of my posts, but still, there are plenty of broken links I should get around to fixing sometime...
However the article is interesting. I thank you for it, as well as your assessment of the translation.
Am I the only one who's really peeved by people who ask "what does this word mean in this context" when referencing a single dictionary would answer that question definitively? Especially when someone claims to have done so but all the evidence suggests otherwise? Man that gets my 🐐.
I honestly do not get why people are so averse to checking a dictionary before asking. I've had OPs outright refuse to do so, saying "a dictionary provides definitions but not meaning". Baffling.
@Cerberus great quote. how were people able to see such things back then when there wasn't (I don't really know) a continuous culture of scholarship and reading and interaction among such people enough to recognize such things and recognize that that would be something to say.
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…