Robert D. wrote the following on 19.07.2007 15:50 :
Excellent advice, it was given to me very recently and I said, no my
connection is stable and guess what…
And it is just an excellent product, I only wish it supported scrolling.
Ctrl-a Esc, then PageUp/PageDown/Up/Down ?
On 7/19/07, Bill K. [email protected] wrote:
From: “Chad P.” [email protected]
My original attempt at this email was better written, but I lost my SSH
connection from the coffee shop to the computer with this email address
on it in mid-composition. Darn it.screen -r ?
Excellent advice, it was given to me very recently and I said, no my
connection is stable and guess what…
And it is just an excellent product, I only wish it supported scrolling.
Let us finish this shameless commercial with the link
http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
Robert
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 10:39:43PM +0900, Wayne E. Seguin wrote:
Excellent exposition Chad.
Thank you! I do try.
On 7/19/07, Lionel B. [email protected] wrote:
Robert D. wrote the following on 19.07.2007 15:50 :
Excellent advice, it was given to me very recently and I said, no my
connection is stable and guess what…
And it is just an excellent product, I only wish it supported scrolling.Ctrl-a Esc, then PageUp/PageDown/Up/Down ?
Hypercool, merci!!
Chad P. wrote:
John W. Russell: “People point. Sometimes that’s just easier. They also
use words. Sometimes that’s just easier. For the same reasons that
pointing has not made words obsolete, there will always be command
lines.”
Well … DOS almost killed the command line out of sheer stupidity. It
took the worst parts of CP-M and reimplemented badly a couple of nice
features of the Unix shell on top of that. CP-M in turn was a bad
re-implementation of some of the rather nice command lines of PDP-11s,
such as RT-11.
My favorite command line story: years ago, I was a systems programmer at
a large NASA facility in the suburbs of Washington, DC. I was
demonstrating a CRT driver I had written for a Xerox Sigma 9, and the
people looking over my shoulder were mostly IBM mainframe programmers.
At one point, I opened up the text editor and said, “I have to edit a
JCL file.” One of the observers said, “That’s JCL? I can actually read
it!”
On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 01:36 +0900, Ari B. wrote:
Daemon was a reference to Maxwell’s Demon, a physics demon that kept
things working in the background. The MIT students then made called
their background processes ‘daemons’ in honor of Maxwell’s Demon.
“Maxwell’s Demon” is a famous thought experiment in thermodynamics:
imagine a container of gas separated into two compartments, with a small
closable aperture between them controlled by an extremely quick and
perceptive creature (the “demon”). As the gas molecules move around
randomly, the demon opens the aperture at opportune moments to permit
“warmer” molecules to pass in one direction between the compartments,
and “colder” molecules in the opposite. The question Maxwell sought to
raise is whether such an arrangement would/could violate the second law
of thermodynamics.
I don’t know offhand whether MIT students did name their background
processes after the demon in Maxwell’s thought experiment, but it seems
unlikely.
-mental
Chad P. [email protected] writes:
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 11:57:01AM +0900, Chad P. wrote:
No, not really. “Daemon” is particular to the Greek meaning, as it
[snip]
Since I’m replying to the below anyway, I’ll mention that the OED
basically disagrees with you albeit conceding that “demon” is “[o]ften
written daemon for distinction from [an evil spirit].”
My original attempt at this email was better written, but I lost my SSH
connection from the coffee shop to the computer with this email address
on it in mid-composition. Darn it.
http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
Don’t walk. Run.
Steve
Actually, From what I know…
Daemon was a reference to Maxwell’s Demon, a physics demon that kept
things working in the background. The MIT students then made called
their background processes ‘daemons’ in honor of Maxwell’s Demon.
Hope this cleared things up.
~ Ari
English is like a pseudo-random number generator - there are a
bajillion rules to it, but nobody cares.
On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 04:40:41AM +0900, Steven L. wrote:
Chad P. [email protected] writes:
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 11:57:01AM +0900, Chad P. wrote:
No, not really. “Daemon” is particular to the Greek meaning, as it
[snip]Since I’m replying to the below anyway, I’ll mention that the OED
basically disagrees with you albeit conceding that “demon” is “[o]ften
written daemon for distinction from [an evil spirit].”
That sounds like agreement to me.
The fact that the OED is essentially exactly the sort of descriptivist
to
which I referred lower down in that email, the part of its definition
that precedes the bit that agrees with me is not a surprise, however.
My original attempt at this email was better written, but I lost my SSH
connection from the coffee shop to the computer with this email address
on it in mid-composition. Darn it.Screen - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
Don’t walk. Run.
I already use screen pretty extensively. I just wasn’t using it at that
moment, unfortunately. I appreciate the reminder, though.
On Jul 19, 2007, at 3:30 PM, MenTaLguY wrote:
law
of thermodynamics.I don’t know offhand whether MIT students did name their background
processes after the demon in Maxwell’s thought experiment, but it
seems
unlikely.
If it’s been on Wikipedia for more than a month, it MUST be true. Bad
things tend to get eliminated quickly.
--------------------------------------------|
If you’re not living on the edge,
then you’re just wasting space.
On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 05:40 +0900, Ari B. wrote:
If it’s been on Wikipedia for more than a month, it MUST be true. Bad
things tend to get eliminated quickly.
Huh, okay. While I’d dispute that that is always the case, in this
instance it also has a citation to back up the claim:
Take Our Word For It, page four, Sez You...
(The link also covers a lot of the other basic ground in the
daemon/demon discussion pretty nicely.)
-mental
Wayne E. Seguin wrote:
It would take a pretty extreme linguistic descriptivist to try to argue
otherwise, armed with a complete disregard for much evidence to the
contrary.Excellent exposition Chad.
I don’t disagree 100%, and I suppose you know more about linguistics
than I do, as I know nearly nothing.
But I still think that the multiplicity of meanings or connotations
precedes the split in spelling. I don’t deny that certain meanings
may have gravitated toward one spelling and other meanings toward
the other – but I don’t think this is based on etymology so much
as habit, accident, or arbitrary convention.
As an example, “theatre” acquired the variant spelling “theater”
quite some time ago – I believe (though I may be wrong) that this
was part of Benjamin Franklin’s efforts to alter American English
spelling.
So these were simply variant spellings, nothing more. But as often
happens, they coexisted side by side for a long period. (And such
things never really die any more, because you can always pick up
an old enough book and it is still there. And yet it is more of a
continuum than a discrete “living or archaic” distinction, of course.
But I digress.)
Anyhow: In some times and circumstances, people pick an older or
more unfamiliar spelling. Perhaps they are trying to be quaint or
pretentious or formal or whatever. I believe that is how “theatre”
came to be associated with live theater (as in plays) and “theater”
came to be associated with motion pictures. I have had people “correct”
me on this issue. But there is no valid historical basis for this. The
variant spelling did not come about because motion pictures were
invented (nor even because they were invented). The variant meanings
were pinned onto the variant spellings at best as a matter of
convenience.
I perceive “daemon” and “demon” the same way. I believe that there have
been countless scholars through history who would have said these were
simply variant spellings. True, the word was used in different ways in
each spelling, and certain meanings may have latched onto certain
spellings. But I do not believe that the spellings deviated because
of a change in semantics.
At the risk of being misunderstood or denigrated, I am a bit of a
prescriptivist. I usually distinguish between what a word means and
how it is used. Thus someone snidely comments that in English, a fat
chance and a slim chance are the same thing; so “fat” and “slim” must
be synonyms. But of course, they don’t mean the same thing; they are
only used to mean the same thing. One is used in a literal way, the
other in an ironic or sarcastic way. They are “used” to mean the same
thing, but their meanings are really different.
In an emergency, I may use the butt of a screwdriver to pound a nail.
But the screwdriver does not then become a hammer (not even if everyone
else also uses it to pound nails).
What I call a “radical prescriptivist” (not me) seems to think that
grammar and usage are like laws of physics, inalienable and unalterable.
I am not so radical. It’s fine for languages to change, but I do not
like for ignorance and carelessness to be the primary drivers of such
change.
The “radical descriptivist” on the other hand is like a doctor who is
so obsessed with categorizing and studying a cancerous growth that he
fails to consider it pathological and lets the patient die.
I’ve had friends who would argue that “imply” and “infer” really mean
the same thing now, since more than 50% of the people don’t know the
difference. I say that using “infer” to mean “imply” is simple ignorance
and should be resisted.
I have known many people who think that “between you and I” is a
preferable usage because “it sounds more elegant” or whatever. My
personal opinion on that, which I never really express, is that
ignorance is never elegant.
As for me, I lean toward prescriptivism while recognizing the extreme
objective value of descriptivism. I just think that language change
should occur slowly and with caution, and there should be “standards”
that are not necessarily totally based on the vote of every wagging
tongue.
My $0.01…
Hal
On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 08:21:46AM +0900, Hal F. wrote:
than I do, as I know nearly nothing.
But I still think that the multiplicity of meanings or connotations
precedes the split in spelling. I don’t deny that certain meanings
may have gravitated toward one spelling and other meanings toward
the other – but I don’t think this is based on etymology so much
as habit, accident, or arbitrary convention.
Etymology basically is an aggregate of habit, accident, and arbitrary
convention, which over time becomes an ingrained tradition of meaning
and
spelling of a given term. Historically, it is very rare for a given
word
to have verifiably developed via a conscious neologism (though within
certain jargon niches this trend is reversed somewhat). That doesn’t
change the associations between specific collections of letters with
specific denotative and connotative meanings that have developed over
the
years.
continuum than a discrete “living or archaic” distinction, of course.
But I digress.)
There was an early differentiation in how the spellings tended to be
used. It was not necessarily a conscious delineation, and there was
almost certainly a brief period when they were almost interchangeable,
but at the same time that would have likely coincided with a period when
both spellings were associated with both meanings about equally, and
your
social and professional status would have signified which meaning you
most often encountered. In other words, the point at which “demon”
became as distinctly specific to a negative connotation would be the
point at which “daemon” ceased being generally interchangeable with
“demon”.
Keep in mind that preceding paragraph contains a bit more personal
speculation than previous statements I’ve made about the subject. I
haven’t really investigated the etymology of “demon” and “daemon”
thoroughly . . . but I’m fairly confident in the above speculations.
Feel free to dismiss them as speculations.
convenience.
It’s true that the distinction between the meanings of “daemon” and
“demon” are not quite as clear-cut as those between “camber” and
“chamber”, for instance, but the point of the discussion of the
differences in usage was related to whether or not “daemon” suffers the
same sort of Christian cultural baggage as “demon” and “god”, as terms
to
use for applying as names to software. For those purposes, the usage
distinctions are quite thoroughly sufficient. The denotative
differences
in meanings and usages are pretty clear.
I perceive “daemon” and “demon” the same way. I believe that there have
been countless scholars through history who would have said these were
simply variant spellings. True, the word was used in different ways in
each spelling, and certain meanings may have latched onto certain
spellings. But I do not believe that the spellings deviated because
of a change in semantics.
They didn’t change because of a change in semantics, per se, but
rather
their deviation from each other was concurrent with a change in
semantics.
At the risk of being misunderstood or denigrated, I am a bit of a
prescriptivist. I usually distinguish between what a word means and
how it is used. Thus someone snidely comments that in English, a fat
chance and a slim chance are the same thing; so “fat” and “slim” must
be synonyms. But of course, they don’t mean the same thing; they are
only used to mean the same thing. One is used in a literal way, the
other in an ironic or sarcastic way. They are “used” to mean the same
thing, but their meanings are really different.
I’m a fair bit of a prescriptivist, myself – which is why I tend to
ignore descriptivist definitions in dictionaries like the OED in favor
of
more precise definitions in dictionaries like the American Heritage.
The
former mentions all the ways in which a term is used without
differentiating meaningfully between them (thus leading to a fair bit of
confusion over the meaning of terms like “infer”), whereas in the latter
the tendency of some people to use “infer” to mean “imply” is noted but
clearly marked as incorrect usage. Your note about how terms are used
to
mean the same thing when their actual meanings are different does apply
here, but with even less of a suggestion that demon and daemon are
synonymous: the usage of the two is distinct, as well as the
traditional denotative associations of each.
In an emergency, I may use the butt of a screwdriver to pound a nail.
But the screwdriver does not then become a hammer (not even if everyone
else also uses it to pound nails).What I call a “radical prescriptivist” (not me) seems to think that
grammar and usage are like laws of physics, inalienable and unalterable.
I am not so radical. It’s fine for languages to change, but I do not
like for ignorance and carelessness to be the primary drivers of such
change.
Agreed. . . .
The “radical descriptivist” on the other hand is like a doctor who is
so obsessed with categorizing and studying a cancerous growth that he
fails to consider it pathological and lets the patient die.
. . . and that’s basically the problem I have with the assertion that
“demon” and “daemon” are culturally interchangeable. They aren’t, even
if some small number of people who are familiar with both terms actually
treat them as interchangeable.
I’ve had friends who would argue that “imply” and “infer” really mean
the same thing now, since more than 50% of the people don’t know the
difference. I say that using “infer” to mean “imply” is simple ignorance
and should be resisted.
Confusion over “imply” and “infer” is one of my pet peeves, really. I
find it more troublesome than confusion over to and too, and over its
and
it’s, because instead of simply being homonyms with similar spellings
and
differing meanings, they are not homonyms, are not spelled all that
similarly, and are almost exactly antonyms.
I have known many people who think that “between you and I” is a
preferable usage because “it sounds more elegant” or whatever. My
personal opinion on that, which I never really express, is that
ignorance is never elegant.
Again, agreed.
As for me, I lean toward prescriptivism while recognizing the extreme
objective value of descriptivism. I just think that language change
should occur slowly and with caution, and there should be “standards”
that are not necessarily totally based on the vote of every wagging
tongue.
Again . . . that’s part of my reason for differentiating between “demon”
and “daemon”. If we don’t, we run the risk of the meaning in usage that
we (who know the difference) currently assign to “daemon” withering away
entirely, leaving sort of a hole in the language, while increasing the
potential for sloppiness in language by turning “daemon” into nothing
more than a variant spelling.
On Jul 19, 2007, at 8:04 PM, Hal F. wrote:
period when
fact that it’s not causal is what bothers me – it makes thein meanings and usages are pretty clear.
I think the (false) distinction between them is a modernism, I wouldsynonyms just as “demon” and “daemon” are.)
if some small number of people who are familiar with both terms
The terms actually are semantically (perhaps not culturally)and “daemon”. If we don’t, we run the risk of the meaning in
spelling, regardless of how many meanings the word may have (or howCheers,
Hal
The spelling variant is the most plausible. English historically was
extremely late at standardizing any spellings whatsoever.
On 7/19/07, Hal F. [email protected] wrote:
To use “daemon” and “demon” to mean different things may be common
usage, but I consider it an outgrowth of ignorance.(I’m not calling
you ignorant, Chad, I’m just saying I think ignorance is the origin of
this false distinction.)
Well, if you subscribe to the meme concept, I would posit that
ignorance has nothing to do with it. You can drill the ‘correct’
meanings of words into everyone, but the most popular use of a word
will determine its future. Hey, it’s fab, man!
I’ve only followed part of this very interesting conversation, so as a
preemptive strike, I apologize if I’m missing the core concept here.
But really, IMHO, descriptivism is where it’s at with understanding
and using living languages (or even dead ones too?). Words and the
grammar that puts them in a discernible order will continue to avoid a
definitive rule set as best they can.
I imagine that you and Chad are irritated by such words as
“irregardless”, irregardless of which ism you ascribe to 
Todd
Chad P. wrote:
There was an early differentiation in how the spellings tended to be
used. It was not necessarily a conscious delineation, and there was
almost certainly a brief period when they were almost interchangeable,
I don’t think the period was brief; I think it was quite long.
but at the same time that would have likely coincided with a period when
both spellings were associated with both meanings about equally, and your
social and professional status would have signified which meaning you
most often encountered. In other words, the point at which “demon”
became as distinctly specific to a negative connotation would be the
point at which “daemon” ceased being generally interchangeable with
“demon”.
Tautological almost. But I’m saying that there was a divergence in
meaning, then later (not causally) a divergence in spelling. The
fact that it’s not causal is what bothers me – it makes the attachment
of a meaning to a spelling especially arbitrary.
Keep in mind that preceding paragraph contains a bit more personal
speculation than previous statements I’ve made about the subject. I
haven’t really investigated the etymology of “demon” and “daemon”
thoroughly . . . but I’m fairly confident in the above speculations.
Feel free to dismiss them as speculations.
Likewise, I’m only saying what I believe to be true.
It’s true that the distinction between the meanings of “daemon” and
“demon” are not quite as clear-cut as those between “camber” and
“chamber”, for instance, but the point of the discussion of the
differences in usage was related to whether or not “daemon” suffers the
same sort of Christian cultural baggage as “demon” and “god”, as terms to
use for applying as names to software. For those purposes, the usage
distinctions are quite thoroughly sufficient. The denotative differences
in meanings and usages are pretty clear.
But “daemon” certainly does have the same baggage as “demon” to people
who are knowledgeable enough. (The rest say “daymun” anyway.)
The word “daemon” has been used for centuries in and out of Christian
circles, sometimes referring to evil spirits, sometimes not.
Likewise the word “demon” has been used for centuries in and out of
Christian circles, sometimes referring to evil spirits, sometimes not.
I think the (false) distinction between them is a modernism, I would
guess far less than a century old, and an incredibly arbitrary and
unnecessary modernism.
They didn’t change because of a change in semantics, per se, but rather
their deviation from each other was concurrent with a change in
semantics.
No, I don’t believe it was. That is my point. I think. Or one of them
maybe. 
I think it’s simply a matter of a word having different senses, just as
a “check” can be a pencil mark, a piece of paper, the bringing of
something to a sudden stop, an action in chess, and so on.
A “demon” or “daemon” strictly speaking is not necessarily evil nor even
part of Christian mythos, just as a “check” in a chess game cannot be
taken to the bank. (We could choose always to spell the latter as
“cheque” – but I would not support that! “Check” and “cheque” are
synonyms just as “demon” and “daemon” are.)
The “radical descriptivist” on the other hand is like a doctor who is
so obsessed with categorizing and studying a cancerous growth that he
fails to consider it pathological and lets the patient die.. . . and that’s basically the problem I have with the assertion that
“demon” and “daemon” are culturally interchangeable. They aren’t, even
if some small number of people who are familiar with both terms actually
treat them as interchangeable.
Funny, I think we’re using the same argument to disagree.
To say, “Well, this is what people actually think” I call descriptivist.
To say, “This is what the words actually mean” I call prescriptivist.
And as I said, I lean toward the latter.
The terms actually are semantically (perhaps not culturally)
interchangeable. The “small number” of people are correct (as is not
unusual). I am reminded of the high school teacher who was nearly fired
for using the word “niggardly” (and for anyone reading who is unaware,
that term is unrelated to race).
To use “daemon” and “demon” to mean different things may be common
usage, but I consider it an outgrowth of ignorance.(I’m not calling
you ignorant, Chad, I’m just saying I think ignorance is the origin of
this false distinction.)
potential for sloppiness in language by turning “daemon” into nothing
more than a variant spelling.
Fascinating. I say it is and always has been nothing more than a variant
spelling, regardless of how many meanings the word may have (or how some
people may tend to associate a certain meaning with a certain spelling).
In any case, no flames intended. A great pleasure to hold this
discussion with you. I don’t think our opinions are reconcilable, but
I think I see your point.
At any rate, this is way off-topic.
Cheers,
Hal
On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 10:04 +0900, Hal F. wrote:
I don’t think the period was brief; I think it was quite long.
Interestingly, the spelling of “Maxwell’s Demon” may be evidence for
that.
(This has been a very interesting set of threads…)
-mental
On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 12:19:39PM +0900, Todd B. wrote:
will determine its future. Hey, it’s fab, man!
I’ve only followed part of this very interesting conversation, so as a
preemptive strike, I apologize if I’m missing the core concept here.
But really, IMHO, descriptivism is where it’s at with understanding
and using living languages (or even dead ones too?). Words and the
grammar that puts them in a discernible order will continue to avoid a
definitive rule set as best they can.I imagine that you and Chad are irritated by such words as
“irregardless”, irregardless of which ism you ascribe to
I’m particularly annoyed by “irregardless” because anyone that pays
attention to the construction of words at all can actually piece
together
an understanding of what the world would really mean, based on its
parts – and no amount of “descriptivism” will change that unless the
meaning of the root word itself is altered.
. . . in which case “regardless” would come to mean something else
entirely. Since that hasn’t happened, “irregardless” is still, in
current usage, wrong.
On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 10:04:51AM +0900, Hal F. wrote:
Chad P. wrote:
There was an early differentiation in how the spellings tended to be
used. It was not necessarily a conscious delineation, and there was
almost certainly a brief period when they were almost interchangeable,I don’t think the period was brief; I think it was quite long.
That depends on your comparison. If you’re comparing it to the period
of
time during which you weren’t aware there was a preceding, Greek meaning
to the term, then yeah, it’s long. If you compare it to the time when
the Greek used the word before it was corrupted by Christian cultural
influence, then no, it wasn’t very long at all.
meaning, then later (not causally) a divergence in spelling. The
fact that it’s not causal is what bothers me – it makes the attachment
of a meaning to a spelling especially arbitrary.
The fact it was (probably) not causal is immaterial to the point of the
discussion. It’s also likely that the divergence in spelling occurred
before the divergence in meaning. In any case, attachment of meaning
to sound is, in some respect, always arbitrary. Really – think about
the sounds of “the” for a moment.
But “daemon” certainly does have the same baggage as “demon” to people
who are knowledgeable enough. (The rest say “daymun” anyway.)
Actually . . . the weight of negative baggage is greatest with those who
are not knowledgeable, and thus do not know “demon” and “daemon” are
distinct words. Regardless of pronunciation errors, it is those who
don’t know about the origins of the terms that tend to think “daemon” is
just “demon” with an A, and it is those who do know something about
the
history of the terms that think “Oh, well, they’re not the same thing.”
I can’t even sort out where one gets the idea that the
more-knowledgeable
would be those most prone to thinking “daemon” implies Christian
cultural
baggage, thus imagining that a persistent process on a Unix system is
named after the Devil’s helpers.
The word “daemon” has been used for centuries in and out of Christian
circles, sometimes referring to evil spirits, sometimes not.
. . . but mostly not.
Likewise the word “demon” has been used for centuries in and out of
Christian circles, sometimes referring to evil spirits, sometimes not.
. . . but mostly for evil spirits, increasingly so over time.
I think the (false) distinction between them is a modernism, I would
guess far less than a century old, and an incredibly arbitrary and
unnecessary modernism.
The distinction between them, as I tried to point out earlier in the
passage you said was “almost a tautology”, basically arose with the
assignment of strong negative connotation. In other words, it is
precisely because of the distinction between them that “demon” took on a
stronger negative connotation.
As for the distinction being a “modernism”, there’s no way to argue
against that, since anything that is now, but wasn’t at some point in
the
past, can be called a modernism.
The key point, one might argue, is that the spelling “daemon” has only
really survived as a way to hold on to the older meaning. In other
words, if it weren’t for the linguistic need of the distinction, there’d
only be the word “demon”. Note the original Greek, where even “daimon”
has come to mean the same thing, connotatively, as “demon”: without a
second spelling, there is primarily only the single meaning.
A “demon” or “daemon” strictly speaking is not necessarily evil nor even
part of Christian mythos, just as a “check” in a chess game cannot be
taken to the bank. (We could choose always to spell the latter as
“cheque” – but I would not support that! “Check” and “cheque” are
synonyms just as “demon” and “daemon” are.)
I think you’re failing to differentiate between analogy and proof, here.
Funny, I think we’re using the same argument to disagree.
To say, “Well, this is what people actually think” I call descriptivist.
To say, “This is what the words actually mean” I call prescriptivist.
And as I said, I lean toward the latter.
The problem here is that the meaning associated with “demon” – the
negative “devil’s helpers” sort of meaning – is an acquired,
connotative
meaning. One might even say that, to a transliteration of the original
Greek term, any assignment of the strictly negative meaning can be
regarded as a descriptivist meaning. Thus, my prescriptivist leanings
lead me to keep using the term “daemon” (an academic transliteration of
the Greek) for the original meaning, and “demon” for the negative
Christian meaning that likely arose around the same time as that
spelling.
this false distinction.)
That’s the point, though – using them to mean different things is not
common usage, because commonly people aren’t aware of the existence of
“daemon” as a word, and when they become aware of it they tend to use it
as interchangeable with “demon”. It’s a “small number” that uses it as
interchangeable because it’s caught between those with an academic
understanding of the origins of the words and those who aren’t even
aware
there’s a separate spelling.
entirely, leaving sort of a hole in the language, while increasing the
potential for sloppiness in language by turning “daemon” into nothing
more than a variant spelling.Fascinating. I say it is and always has been nothing more than a variant
spelling, regardless of how many meanings the word may have (or how some
people may tend to associate a certain meaning with a certain spelling).
If anything, it is “demon” that is, and always has been, a variant
spelling – in which case, you should be fighting for the original
meaning, and not the Christian cultural meaning to be assigned to both.
In any case, no flames intended. A great pleasure to hold this
discussion with you. I don’t think our opinions are reconcilable, but
I think I see your point.
Ditto . . . except that I still hold out hope that there’s some
possibility of arriving at a greater agreement, somehow, even if only in
terms of being more clear on the point of differentiation between our
opinions.
At any rate, this is way off-topic.
True, that.
On 7/20/07, Chad P. [email protected] wrote:
I’m particularly annoyed by “irregardless” because anyone that pays
attention to the construction of words at all can actually piece together
an understanding of what the world would really mean, based on its
parts – and no amount of “descriptivism” will change that unless the
meaning of the root word itself is altered.. . . in which case “regardless” would come to mean something else
entirely. Since that hasn’t happened, “irregardless” is still, in
current usage, wrong.
I agree. I don’t envision us seeing formal use of that word during
our lifetimes, and personally don’t want to see it happen. Something
about that ir- and -less in the same word…
I just brought it up because I think time has a tendency to formalize
what once was casual, and trivially cast aside what once was set in
stone, with little or no care of your or my feelings about the matter.
It seemed to me that Hal was suggesting this happens simply because
of ignoramuses throwing words this way and that. No grammatical
discipline, darn it! Those silly poets and their licenses.
In any case, I think you may be talking about the way it should be,
and I’m talking about the way it is. Of course, most of us logistical
folk shield ourselves from such nonsense by labeling words in our
dictionaries as “formal”, “casual”, “colloqial”, “slang”, or
“nonstandard”, even though such appellations fail to be mutually
exclusive.
Todd
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