I want to write It was better to be guilty than accusative. And I can't. Nobody uses "accusative" that way any more. People will snigger and slip out of the story, grammarians will think up obscurely objective puns, I will be the laughing stock of the fictive enterprise.
There are of course alternatives - accusing, accusant - but they lack the happy rhythm of accusative. Grr. I hate when a word is absolutely right and you can't use it because other people will think it wrong. That does in fact make it wrong, by definition.
There are of course alternatives - accusing, accusant - but they lack the happy rhythm of accusative. Grr. I hate when a word is absolutely right and you can't use it because other people will think it wrong. That does in fact make it wrong, by definition.