Category: Language Matters
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The Dictionary Fallacy
Substack latest Check out today's Facebook rant for something a bit more edgy.
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On ‘Political’ and ‘Partisan’
Top o' the Stack.
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What do Democrats Mean by ‘Democracy’?
The Dems are always going on about 'our democracy,' their noble defense of it, and the Republicans' nefarious assault upon it. But they never tell us what they mean by 'democracy.' One is left to speculate. Here is David Brooks commenting on the recent gerrymandering/redistricting contretemps: I understand the argument. But let's do a little…
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‘Journo’ Bias at the AP and the Meaning of ‘Shyster’
'Journo' is my term of disapprobation-unto-contempt for liberal-left journalists. It is on a par with 'shyster' as a term of abuse for a certain sort of lawyer. Dig this from today's news: NEW YORK (AP) — A club shooting in the New York City borough of Brooklyn early Sunday morning has left three people dead…
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‘Asylum Seekers’
Is a home invader an asylum seeker? Only in very rare cases. So why are people who immigrate illegally called asylum seekers? A few are but most are not. What we have here, once again, is the characteristic 'progressive' abuse of language. You should have learned by now that no word or phrase is safe…
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A Curious Use of ‘Essence’
J. K. Rowling: Being a woman isn't an essence, it's a material, provable fact. I'm not a female human being because society or history made me one, or because I picked the 'woman' category on some metaphysical spreadsheet. I'm a woman because I was born with the equipment to produce large gametes.
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‘Pastime’
Whatever we are here for, we are not here to pass time. Our time is to be used and used well. You say it doesn't matter how we spend our time since nothing matters? That may or may not be so. But it matters which. If something does matter and you live as if nothing…
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‘Per’ versus ‘As Per’
I have become annoyed recently by the increasing use of 'per' instead of 'as per' by journalists. Here is an example: And that essentially was the end of her [Kamala's] campaign. Per Democratic strategist James Carville, “It’s the one question that you exist to answer, all right? That is it. That’s the money question. That’s the…
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Retribution and Psycho-Political Projection
'Retribution' has two main senses in English, and they are importantly different. The word can refer to revenge or to a form of justice, retributive justice. Do I have to explain that justice is not revenge? Conflating the two, journalistic shills for deep-state malefactors try to dismiss as revenge what is a quest for justice…
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Against Verbal Inflation
There's too damned much 'reaching out' going on. A Substack protest.
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Are Catholics Christians?
A fellow philosopher writes, While reading Clarence Thomas’s opinion in Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services (2025), I came across this sentence: “Americans have different views, for example, on whether Catholics are Christians.” I’ve heard it said, before, that Catholics aren’t Christians, but never knew what to make of it. (The same thing is…
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Slop Talk
'Due process' is a term of legal shop talk. Those of us who know something about the law — I know a little — know how to use it correctly. And those of us who think that words ought to be used responsibly in serious discussions should take offense at the 'slop talk' use of…
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‘Old Hat’
It's an expression I have often used. To say of something that it is old hat is to say that it is old, or well-known, or passé. Wondering about the origin of this curious phrase, I turned to Robert Hendrickson, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd ed. (2004), p. 529. What I found there surprised me:…
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Journalists and the Spread of Illiteracy
CNN reported at the time that the footwear rule came into play after the local mountain rescue crews became exacerbated by having to rescue so many people tripping over their own feet. "These are difficult paths, in some cases, similar to mountain paths,” Patrizio Scarpellini, director of the Cinque Terre National Park, told CNN Travel. “Essential to…
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Who Put the ‘Man’ in ‘Manufacture’?
A congresswoman asked the question recently. It is a question from a fem-Dem that exposes her ignorance. There is no 'man' in 'manufacture' in the way there is a 'bomp' in the "bomp bah bomp bah bomp" and a 'ram' in the "rama lama ding dong." 'Manufacture' is built out of two Latin words, manus,…