tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513645860996121165.post468325697654097850..comments2024-01-28T03:23:39.580-08:00Comments on Late in the Day: The administrative class gets ever-more clever about getting inside the heads of the techno-eunuchs it employsBarney Quickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14691587302177294439noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513645860996121165.post-24445980904545963362017-06-20T21:50:53.987-07:002017-06-20T21:50:53.987-07:00To Noah Webster, On New-Fangled Modes of Writing a...To Noah Webster, On New-Fangled Modes of Writing and Printing <br />By Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) <br /> <br /> <br />I CANNOT but applaud your zeal for preserving the purity of our language, both in its expressions and pronunciation, and in correcting the popular errors several of our States are continually falling into with respect to both. Give me leave to mention some of them, though possibly they may have already occurred to you. I wish, however, in some future publication of yours, you would set a discountenancing mark upon them. The first I remember is the word improved. When I left New England, in the year 1723, this word had never been used among us, as far as I know, but in the sense of ameliorated or made better, except once in a very old book of Dr. Mather’s, entitled Remarkable Providences. As that eminent man wrote a very obscure hand, I remember that when I read that word in his book, used instead of the word imployed, I conjectured it was an error of the printer, who had mistaken a too short l in the writing for an r, and a y with too short a tail for a v; whereby imployed was converted into improved. 1 <br /> . <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513645860996121165.post-64277557505803107302017-06-20T13:32:19.480-07:002017-06-20T13:32:19.480-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Mr. Dingshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14012432470112143051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513645860996121165.post-83912362704955681222017-06-20T13:06:23.982-07:002017-06-20T13:06:23.982-07:00Definitely off topic; The word "advocate"...Definitely off topic; The word "advocate", at the time of the words addition to Webster's the founding fathers were vehemently opposed to it's addition.<br /><br /> Benjamin Franklin may have been a great innovator in science and politics, but on the subject of advocate, he was against change. In 1789, he wrote a letter to his compatriot Noah Webster complaining about a "new word": the verb advocate. Like others of his day, Franklin knew advocate primarily as a noun meaning "one who pleads the cause of another," and he urged Webster to condemn the verb's use. <br /><br />What would Webster and Franklin have to say today. I am on Franklins side making the word a verb was a bad idea.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com