One of my pet peeves -- I have many -- was people, mostly police officers, who,
when referring to the identification of automobiles, called it the "VIN
number." The "N" in "VIN" stands for number, so we don't need it twice. But,
then, these are the same people who never get out of their car and walk up to a
car they've stopped and talk to the driver; they say, "I exited my vehicle and
approached the subject's vehicle and engaged in conversation with its occupant."
Give me a frigging break!
Walt
--
"Anything more than 500 yards from
the car just isn't photogenic." --
Edward Weston
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Dan Mitchell <danmitchell@xxxxxxxx>
>
> > So your spell checker doesn't recognise/ize that it's "hoi polloi", nor does
> > your grammar checker know that it's "hoi polloi" and not "the hoi polloi"
>
> Ah, I'm just in the middle of writing a comment about "the hoi polloi"
> -vs- "hoi polloi", so I'll tag onto yours.
>
> I had exactly the same argument with someone a while ago -- is it like
> "ATM machine", etc? It's not as clear, because redundant words next to
> acronyms aren't quite the same; similarly, "the algebra test" is also
> redundant, but algebra has had the "al" folded into the main word.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoi_polloi#Questions_on_usage
>
> talks about this -- the best equivalent is "I'd like my beef sandwich
> with au jus"..
>
>
> Poking around on wikipedia, I found this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misleading_place_names
>
> For instance, there's an "Oxford" in Ohio -- and it's the home of
> Miami U (?!)
>
> -- dan
>
>
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