In that language, infinitives were an unsplittable single word: to split is dilaminare. I confess that I long avoided the split infinitive (“To boldly go where no man has gone before”), until I learned it was an 18th century codification by an obscure grammarian who thought English should be more like Latin. Those who think we should go with the flow of evolution in syntax - welcome to the 21st century, word codgers - balk at the usage traditions of their very elder elders.
(READ: the complete parody of the Gettysburg Address by scrolling down this webpage) In Mad magazine in 1956, Doodles Weaver copyedited the Gettysburg Address, amending “Fourscore and seven years” to “Eighty-seven: Be explicit!” Yet today’s teachers indoctrinate their pupils with many rules from Lincoln’s time and long before. One hundred fifty years later, no one speaks or writes like Abraham Lincoln. My mother, a first-grade schoolteacher, instructed her two sons that “between you and I” was wrong, and that the proper way to answer the phone was to say, “This is he.” But she was born in 1907 - for the edification of mathematicians in the room, I was a very late baby - and may have taken syntax cues from her mother, born in the 1860s. Each person’s sense of grammar probably came from his or her teachers or parents. That’s the sticking point about language: it keeps changing. to end a sentence with a preposition, and to use the word O.K. English teachers, on realizing that Weird Al has become the arbiter for proper grammar, may figuratively (not literally) look for the nearest bridge to jump off. The Yankovic number that has attracted more than (not over) 12 million listens on YouTube - and which (not that) everyone is sending to his or her (never their) friends - is “Word Crimes,” a “Blurred Lines” parody that (not which) itemizes crimes against the language. 1 since 1963, when Allan Sherman’s My Son, the Nut reigned on the Billboard charts, propelled by its (not it’s) hit single “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” (insert commas). It’s (not its) the first comedy album to reach No. S.E.The plaque commemorating pitcher Greg Maddux’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame this week testifies that he is the “only hurler with 300 wins, 3,000 strikeouts and less than 1,000 walks.” If you winced, or for that matter hurled, at the use of less instead of fewer, you may be a careful reader, a grammar snob - or Weird Al Yankovic.Īt 56, after nearly 40 years of musical burlesques, the accordion-grinding pop satirist has scored his first top-of-the-pops CD with the album Mandatory Fun.In modern soccer VAR is short for Video _ Referee.The addictive component in tobacco and a mild stimulant.The primary component of the cell walls around plant cells.An electrical component that can hold an electrical charge and release it in short bursts.Double _ (two movies shown back-to-back).Artificial device for stimulating the heart muscle.You might find packets of this type of material packaged with products that should be kept dry.Carbon dioxide makes up the vast majority of greenhouse gas _.
All letters excluding vowels letters like B C D F and G.A past _ is the form of a verb typically ending in -ed.New York-based fashion designer Ralph _.