Feel free to ignore this post. I’m a little grumpy–partly because it started raining just as I was on my way to the Wednesday hike (and then stopped after it was too late), just as it did last Wednesday. Strange: I think I only missed a hike once during the proper rainy season because of weather–and here it happens twice in a row in late April, with most other days being beautiful. [These are real hikes–4 to 6 miles, significant vertical in most cases, with hiking sticks. My wife & I also do afternoon walks every day when it’s feasible, but that’s only 1.25 miles with a couple dozen feet vertical. Those are walks, not hikes.]
Anyhoo… a couple of grumps about language, not that they’ll do any good:
- The singular of media is medium. TV is a medium, it is not a media. I’m hoping this one isn’t lost just yet…
- Conversely, unless you’re talking about a psychic convention or a stack of clothes that are neither small nor large, the plural of medium is media, not “mediums.” I’ve seen “mediums” a few times too often lately; I autocorrect it in blogs that I’m citing for C&I, but it’s maddening. When you put TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, the web together, you’re talking about media, not mediums. [Gaah. Looking at Merriam-Webster, I see that advertising folks talk about “media” as singular and “medias” as plural. Gaah. I might buy “media” as a mass noun in certain cases–“the news media”–in which case you could reasonably use the singular. But medias? Really?]
- The verb that results in something being lost has the same number of os as the condition–it’s lose, not loose. This should not be difficult; I have yet to see anyone assume that “loost” is a correct spelling. I would love to say “loose is not a verb,” but that’s not true, although it’s a fairly quaint verb. On the other hand, when used intransitively, there’s no question: Loose is always a transitive verb. You can lose (“you lose” is a perfectly good sentence) but you can’t loose, you can only loose something.
- The word for a flashing of light produced by a discharge of atmospheric electricity does not have an e in it. The word is lightning. Yes, lightening (with an e) is a word–but it only applies if a color or burden or something becomes lighter/lessened.
Enough grumpiness for today. I don’t think I’m a stickler for grammar, and I know language changes and believe it should. (I regard “data” as a mass noun taking singular formation except when used in a scientific sense, for example, and I deliberately use “they” as a genderless singular third-person pronoun.) These ones don’t represent changing language, though, I don’t think–just sloppiness.
I won’t even start on less and fewer. I’d like to think there’s still hope for the distinction, but I’m not very confident.
She participated in seances with several spiritual media, attempting to contact her dead husband?
Ruth: I love it, but in that case my dictionary does give “mediums” as the plural.
If you had a “like” button, I would have hit it!
> I won’t even start on less and fewer
See “Language Log” anti-grump:
“If it was good enough for King Alfred the Great…”
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JDPtGgm8yE8J:itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html
Two responses, Seth:
1. I did say I won’t even start on that distinction.
2. I’m unimpressed by citing King Alfred the Great; in his time, spelling was pretty much “as you wish” as well. On the other hand, the article was interesting… (my own take: There are times when, for distinctly countable items–like apples and dollars, *not so much* like minutes and hours–“less” just feels wrong to me. It’s a feeling, not a Strict Grammatical Rule.)