The Lemon Fool

Seb Coe talking about Roger Bannister

"I don't think he realised the enormity of what he had done"


Rob

The neutral usage is -according to various online dictionaries - acceptable these days.

AleisterCrowley wrote:The neutral usage is -according to various online dictionaries - acceptable these days.

Doesn't stop it being an abomination.

Empathy annoys me in the same way. No-one has sympathy any more, and emotional subjects have become emotive instead.
Gender has replaced sex, probably because Americans became too embarassed to utter, though not perform, the latter.
In the media, stories now emerge, while all previously satisfactory prepositions are rolled into the two cliched prepositions of the moment, "over" and "around": wooly, weasily, pompous words.
Even Brits now use the awful bland "attendee" as a matter of course, where formerly participant, audience or spectator were more specific and less etymologically ignorant. Similarly retiree is creeping in to replace pensioner or retired person.

Which all begs the question of when myself and my wife will take cognizance of all this and move our kids to a school that obligates them to speak properly.


GS

Have you read 'The King's English' by Sir Kingsley Amis?

I recommend you diary some me-time to engage with it.

AleisterCrowley wrote:Have you read 'The King's English' by Sir Kingsley Amis?

I recommend you diary some me-time to engage with it.

I haven't. Perhaps one to add to my birthday list...


GS

Does Coe have anything to say about the enormity of his own career?

Right at the heart of an Establishment that has crushed the sport that Banister exemplified, and replaced it with a glitzy media and political operation governed by industrial grade scientific/pharmaceutical programmes, and above all by technical legalistic application of rules and dodgy exceptions?

GoSeigen wrote:

AleisterCrowley wrote:Have you read 'The King's English' by Sir Kingsley Amis?

I recommend you diary some me-time to engage with it.

I haven't. Perhaps one to add to my birthday list...


GS

An excellent read.