I agree, Steve, and I admitted to Jez as much. But the author could have more
elegantly written, “Pedro was supine in the bottom of the boat”. It’s small
point, I know.
Chris
> On 1 Mar 2015, at 13:47, Bob Whitmire <bwhitmire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hadn’t thought of “as of”. I may be an offender. When I use it, which is
> rarely, it’s mostly a time thing, as in “as of last Thursday, we’d spent only
> $45 on gasoline for the week.” I don’t think I’ve heard “as of yet” anywhere,
> but I’m not always paying attention. It’s difficult to listen to the daily
> brutal assaults on language all around us.
>
> I might be able to overlook the use of ricochet in that sense as a kind
> bending of one meaning to illustrate another. Boats certainly don’t ricochet,
> but the image of one slamming from one rock to another is rather fanciful. Of
> course, if you’ve ever _seen_ a boat hit rocks, you know they don’t do
> anything that even approximates a ricochet. They tend to slam and bounce and
> fall to pieces as they either sink or get flung up on the shore. Depending on
> the size of the boat, it seems a slow-motion event. Okay, I change my mind.
> Silly writer! Boats don’t ricochet, even when driven by poetic license.
>
> But “lying supine” is beyond the pale. At least they didn’t say “laying
> supine.” Give thanks for small favors. <g>
>
> --Bob Whitmire
> Certified Neanderthal
>
> On Mar 1, 2015, at 2:08 AM, ChrisB <ftog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> I look forward to your finding it, Bob. One of the worst assaults on
>> English by the military (mainly the US military) is the “as of” phrase.
>> Originally intended to give a precise timescale (in the UK accountants used
>> to use “as at”), it has strayed into everyday use and gives rise to the foul
>> “as of yet”. It’s foul because “yet” means exactly the same thing, but the
>> expansion of our language with unnecessary prepositions (whether or not the
>> turn up at the end of a clause or sentence :-)) ruins the simplicity and
>> elegance of many of our words.
>>
>> On a slightly different thread of linguisticts, yesterday I listened to a
>> pretty good radio play as I was driving, enjoying it until . . . I heard the
>> phrase “a boat ricocheting against the rocks of the reef” (completely
>> ignoring the meaning of ‘ricochet’) and then a minute or so later, “he was
>> lying supine in the bottom of the boat”; how else would he lie, or what is
>> supine but lying?
>>
>> I managed to forget these errors and enjoyed the rest of the story :-)
>
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