Chuck, Chuck, you have not been paying attention to the Chief Constable of the
Olympus List Language and Usage Police. While usages do evolve (unless you’re a
Republican candidate for US President), lines must be drawn, ramparts must be
manned, and bright blades and polished shields must be raised against the
darkness into which ultimately we all will disappear without a trace. Or, as
some of my Southern brethren (now yours) might say with wistful expressions as
they contemplate the Confederate failed attempt at glory, “The only cause worth
fighting for is a lost cause.”
Furthermore, if all the legions of Mordor were arrayed against me, Still I
would not say the weather is dank! <g>
--Bob Whitmire
Certified Neanderthal
On Feb 17, 2015, at 11:53 AM, Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> I strongly disagree. Whether you or the teacher use it that way or not I do,
> just like Charlie and lots of other people as well. Search Google with this
> quoted phrase "the weather is dank" and you'll get 2,370 hits. Language is
> ultimately based on usage and not the dictionary.
>
> Chuck Norcutt
>
> On 2/17/2015 10:42 AM, Bob Whitmire wrote:
>> The dictionary that pops up when I highlight a word on my Mac says for dank:
>>
>> dank |daNGk| adjective
>> disagreeably damp, musty, and typically cold.
>> DERIVATIVES
>> dankly adverb.
>> dankness noun
>> ORIGIN Middle English: probably ofScandinavian origin and related to
>> Swedishdank ‘marshy spot.’
>> I tend to think of some basements as being dank. Seldom, if ever, have I
>> used the word as a direct description of weather. In days gone by during my
>> youthful explorations of the mountains of Western North Carolina, I might
>> have escaped a maddening and ongoing drizzle by ducking into a natural rock
>> shelter. The shelter might be dank, musty, etc., but not the weather outside
>> it. Hope this is slightly clearer than mud. I do think that if I saw the
>> above mentioned adverb— dankly—I might collapse with laughter, which, I
>> suspect, would not be what the writer intended.
>> But then I’m not sure I would have subtracted points from a pupil’s paper
>> for using it as your daughter did. Instead, I might have written a note in
>> the margin explaining distinctions as I understood them.
>> —Bob Whitmire
>> Certified Neanderthal
--
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