Pedant turned heretic

[desperance]

Coo - I have just made an intransitive verb transitive. Specifically, the verb is 'debouch', and I have just decided that 'the ramp debouched us' is a perfect sensible thing to say. I am now going to walk to the library, and no doubt the sky will fall on my head en route. Seek me under the cloths of heaven, crushed...

Comments

[fastfwd.livejournal.com]

I personally think it's a good idea to make the language stretch every so often. As the prelapsarian Humpty-Dumpty so sagely observed from his perch on high, "It's all a matter of who is the master--you or the word."

That's glory for you.:)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Better be debouched by a ramp than debauched by it, no ?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

But yes. Emphatically. (Actually I have a dreadful feeling that my fingers may have typed 'debauched' first time round, as being a pattern they're more used to; but obviously I'm not going to admit to that.)

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

I was about to write this exact thing! The images that come to mind....

[billbrent.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely.

We are all tiny steel balls in the pachinko machine of life. Any time we can bounce off the peg of our choosing, methinks, we gain zany momentum. We might even land in the bonus pocket and grab a whole new lease on life. BOINK!

(And here, it's both v.intr. and v.tr.: )
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/debouch

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ooh, so it is! Thanks for that. Me, I'm still a paper dictionary man - indeed, I have upstairs and downstairs dictionaries; if I'm sitting down, one is never more than a long arm's reach away - but Chambers has it strictly as intransitive. And I can't be bothered (shock, horror!) to wrestle with either the weight or the print-size of the OED...

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of a pedant's bible (written by a chap called Fowler) and his attitude towards split infinitives, which could best be summed up (as I recall) as 'Never. Never ever. Never ever and never again. Except when it works.'

I've long since sent my copy to Barter Books, so I'm relying on my memory here.

'Debouched' as transitive sounds good to me.

Memo to self, go thou and do likewise.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ah, "Fowler's English Usage"! Still on my shelves. I tend to go to it for support more than enlightenment: when people challenge my use of 'disinterested', eg, or various other ways whereby my own pedantry runs up against someone else's.

And no, I never split infinitives - but that's only because I so much enjoy manipulating word-orders in order to avoid it.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

I only mentioned it because of an ongoing debate with an old boss about 'To boldly go...' about which he waxed venomous. My producing Mr Fowler had no effect. That's why he was a boss and I wasn't.