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Assume v. Presume

Expert witness on Breakfast (talking about security in Germany) said ad hoc when he presumably meant ad infinitum: "limited resources... cannot continue surveillance on multiple suspects ad hoc"

I hope no security surveillance is carried out ad hoc!
 
Never trust an expert witness to get anything right - especially Latin.
Black Hole said:
I hope no security surveillance is carried out ad hoc!
Click to expand...
If ad hoc means "created or done for a particular purpose as necessary" then I hope some security surveillance is carried out ad hoc.
 
Just going back to boxset/box set for a moment, I was in town yesterday and noticed a sign saying "No drinks what so ever outside the bar" (sic). I've always thought 'whatsoever' was one word, but with this thread so fresh in mind I wondered.
According to the online entries Google throws up it seems that it is indeed a single word, though sometimes hyphenated. I imagine it originally began as three words and was contracted in use, so there is a clear precedent for 'boxset', though it has perhaps skipped the hyphen stage.
 
MikeSh said:
Just going back to boxset/box set for a moment, I was in town yesterday and noticed a sign saying "No drinks what so ever outside the bar" (sic). I've always thought 'whatsoever' was one word, but with this thread so fresh in mind I wondered.
According to the online entries Google throws up it seems that it is indeed a single word, though sometimes hyphenated. I imagine it originally began as three words and was contracted in use, so there is a clear precedent for 'boxset', though it has perhaps skipped the hyphen stage.
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Indeed, and as I have probably previously mentioned the generation before mine would have expected "to-day". That's not to say we can't hurrumph about the new-fangled sloppy ways. I'm mainly railing against the loss of the adjective form - which never seems to have been present in the first place, let alone dropped as a contraction.

On Radio 4 today I heard a continuity announcer refer to an "adaption" rather than an "adaptation". Where the hell did that come from???
 
This Morning about champagne: "Bigger bubbles and less of them" or "Bigger bubbles with fewer of them"?
 
Here's something that is really entrenched now (for example): "four times less..."

This is completely meaningless, yet Joe Public seem to accept that it is the same as saying "a quarter" (which is what is meant, but mathematically it isn't the same at all).
 
Similar to the new expression for "twice as much" which now seems to be "two times as much". Admittedly it is mathematically the same, but a bit cumbersome. Do they think that people will not understand "twice as much"?
But what about my bubbles?
 
That's wrong as well. It should be "Once, twice, thrice a lady" The 'twice' and 'thrice' imply multiplication without the word 'times'. But it wouldn't scan as well.:(
That's nearly as bad as saying pin number.:eek:
 
Trev said:
That's nearly as bad as saying pin number.:eek:
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But if we said pi number some idiot would put in 3.14159265359 and then complain it didn't work. (I know, we just say "You didn't put enough of it in. Try 20 places after the decimal." :whistling: )
 
Trev said:
That's wrong as well. It should be "Once, twice, thrice a lady" The 'twice' and 'thrice' imply multiplication without the word 'times'. But it wouldn't scan as well
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Ah yes, you are right. So Lionel had it right after all by saying "Once" then "Twice" then "Three times".
 
Trev said:
But what about my bubbles?
Click to expand...
I don't think I want to know about your baubles.

Less of or fewer when dealing with a large number. Hmm - tricky. I like exploring boundary cases, like for example if you were to saw a foot off the top of a mountain it would still be a mountain... but after how many feet were lopped off would it become a hill (and I'm not talking about the geographers' rigid definition of 3,000 feet or whatever it is).
 
MikeSh said:
But if we said pi number some idiot would put in 3.14159265359 and then complain it didn't work. (I know, we just say "You didn't put enough of it in. Try 20 places after the decimal." :whistling: )
Click to expand...
Is that like using asterisks for your password?
 
It's a line from The IT Crowd:

"My keyboard is broken. Whatever I type comes up asterisks"
"Change your password to asterisks then"
 
As it's Christmas do we think ITV News should be forgiven for ..."as authorities diffuse Second World War bomb"?


No, probably not. It was our bomb which has ruined a lot of peoples' Christmas and the least we can do is to use our own flipping language properly :mad:

Happy Christmas to everyone else anyway :)
(I'm waiting for the relatives to arrive in case you're wondering.)
 
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