English Phrasal Verbs

[Guest MacPhee]

By "phrasal verb", I mean forms like "go up" "go down" "go into" and so on. A verb, followed by a modifier, often, as in these examples, a preposition. These are very common in English, but they can have multiple meanings.

 

For example, what does "Go off" mean?

 

It can have at least four meanings:

 

1. "Leave, Depart" - "Next week, I go off on holiday"

2. "Explode" - "When you pull the pin out of a grenade, it will go off"

3. "Putrefy" - "If you leave a bottle of milk in the sun for three days, it will go off"

4. "Dislike"" - "If you keep doing that, I'll go off you"

 

So "Go off" seems able, potentially, to replace four verbs: Leave, Explode, Putrefy, Dislike.

 

Suppose these verbs were actually eliminated from our vocabulary - the verbs entirely ceased to exist, and were replaced by "Go off". What effect would that have on our clarity of thought?

[Turtle]

...Suppose these verbs were actually eliminated from our vocabulary - the verbs entirely ceased to exist, and were replaced by "Go off". What effect would that have on our clarity of thought?

 

:lol: i hope i don't go off topic, but word police never seem to go over well.

 

word police @ urban dictionary

1. A person who takes it upon themselves to correct the grammar of not only their close friends but also causal acquaintances, often at the expense of disregarding surrounding circumstances.

 

Friend:

"Dude, where was you last night?!? I saw your girl at the club getting all up on some other dude. She totally left with him and his buddy, yelling something about a threesome."

 

Word Officer:

"Don't you mean, 'where were you last night?'?"

 

Friend:

"Dude, who are you? The Word Police??"

[Guest MacPhee]

:lol: i hope i don't go off topic, but word police never seem to go over well.

 

 

 

The idea of Word Police, sounds not unacceptable. As long as they are gentle, and only punish wrong words, and wrong grammar, not "wrong ideas". They could be an admirable and urgently needed disciplinary force in today's increasingly illiterate society.

 

I was interested to note that your kind reply, includes the phrasal verb "go over well". This accurately conveys your meaning. What single verb would capture the nuances of "go over well". Can you think of one?

 

Phrasal verbs can be good things. As in your post. But I'm still worried by "go off".

[Turtle]

The idea of Word Police, sounds not unacceptable. As long as they are gentle, and only punish wrong words, and wrong grammar, not "wrong ideas". They could be an admirable and urgently needed disciplinary force in today's increasingly illiterate society.

 

I was interested to note that your kind reply, includes the phrasal verb "go over well". This accurately conveys your meaning. What single verb would capture the nuances of "go over well". Can you think of one?

 

Phrasal verbs can be good things. As in your post. But I'm still worried by "go off".

 

i realize "word police" has some appeal, however it simply isn't practical in most cases. certainly wrong grammar, and per se wrong words, present the danger of conveying wrong ideas, but principally when the reader is in the know. i cringed just yesterday at a sentence in a form letter from a legislator wherein they wrote "effect" when the correct word was "affect". :doh: i imagine most readers don't know the difference and understood the intended meaning. where's a good editor when you need one?

 

i did of course intentionally use "go over well" because of the context, but i might have writ "assenting to word police is uncommon.". a couple of other single verbs come to mind; "acquiescing" and "acceding". vulgar werds is as vulgar wirds duz, so no need to have a conniption. :rant: :lol:

 

you might find the urban dictionary's entry for "go off" amusing. >> go off

 

ps my pet peeve is mispellings in posts; particularly those of a technical nature. talk about throwing a hissy fit! misspellers of the world untie! :hammer:

[belovelife]

drive on a parkway, and park on a driveway

 

[Eclogite]

Suppose these verbs were actually eliminated from our vocabulary - the verbs entirely ceased to exist, and were replaced by "Go off". What effect would that have on our clarity of thought?

You propose a hypothetical situation that is very unlikely to occur. One of the strengths of English has been its ability to expand, not only through internal neologisms, but by acquisition from other languages. It is rare for words or phrases to be abandoned when they still offer important distinctions of meaning. (Though see my last paragraph for a disturbing exception.)

 

Therefore, as long as it is important to be able to clarify 'go off', through redundancy, then those other words are unlikely to disappear. If they did, then we would be relying upon context for clarification. This is not always adequate.

 

SLightly off topic now, two points:

 

Some spoilsport gave negative rep to belovelife, perhaps because their post was strictly off-topic. That was rather mean and so I have returned the slate to neutral with a plus vote.

 

The distinction between fewer and less is almost entirely being ignored. We have fewer discrete items and less continuous quantities. Therefore, you cannot have less people attending school, you can only have fewer people attending school. Even BBC newsreaders get this wrong, which is the best evidence yet for the end of civilisation as we know it in 2012.

[Guest MacPhee]

The distinction between fewer and less is almost entirely being ignored. We have fewer discrete items and less continuous quantities. Therefore, you cannot have less people attending school, you can only have fewer people attending school. Even BBC newsreaders get this wrong, which is the best evidence yet for the end of civilisation as we know it in 2012.

 

Yes, I share your feelings about the "fewer/less" distinction. I always make an effort to use "fewer". But the word is probably doomed. This pains me. A word lost, may be a diminution of the range of thought.

 

However, maybe not.

We say "less" butter, and (maintaining a dying distinction) "fewer" eggs.

But we happily say "more" butter and "more" eggs. Should we say instead, not "more", but "manier" or "manyer" eggs?

 

Does we miss the word "manier", does its absence constrain our thinking?

[Turtle]

...SLightly off topic now, two points:

 

Some spoilsport gave negative rep to belovelife, perhaps because their post was strictly off-topic. That was rather mean and so I have returned the slate to neutral with a plus vote.

 

 

that would be me. this function is for the use of members and changing it is not within your legitimate purview. please put it back before i go off.

[Turtle]

...SLightly off topic now, two points:

 

Some spoilsport gave negative rep to belovelife, perhaps because their post was strictly off-topic. That was rather mean and so I have returned the slate to neutral with a plus vote.

 

The distinction between fewer and less is almost entirely being ignored. We have fewer discrete items and less continuous quantities. Therefore, you cannot have less people attending school, you can only have fewer people attending school. Even BBC newsreaders get this wrong, which is the best evidence yet for the end of civilisation as we know it in 2012.

 

ah what the hell...i think i'll go off anyway. :rant:

 

i imagine you wrote "SLightly" to have a jab at me in light of my expressing disdain for misspellings. spoilsport!! meanie!!! but seriously; let's not mince words. belovey is an inveterate poster of off-topic and interruptive material & i have little patience for such willful douchebaggery. :naughty: inasmuch as you understood that the post was off-topic, as a moderator you should have also neg-repped him or sent him a reproof.

 

as you bring up number i have to also wonder if your use of their in "Some spoilsport gave negative rep to belovelife, perhaps because their post was strictly off-topic." was by accident or design. while some grammar police would find fault with this synesis on the claim that it makes our thinking less clear, i have no problem with it. had you strictly followed grammatical rules -and assuming you really don't know belovy is a boy- you should have written "his/her". i see that "proper" form as an uneccessary bother & an interuption to the reader.

 

cha togar m' fhearg gun dìoladh.

[Qfwfq]

Gosh you're learning Gaelic now?

 

According to one of Merriam-Webster's Ask The Editor episodes, it is quite correct to use plural pronouns in conjuntion with the likes of someone.

 

...and changing it is not within your legitimate purview.

-1 + 1 = 0

 

He did not change it, he just used it. Ooops, they just used it. Er, used them...:lol:

[Turtle]

Gosh you're learning Gaelic now?

 

According to one of Merriam-Webster's Ask The Editor episodes, it is quite correct to use plural pronouns in conjuntion with the likes of someone.

 

-1 + 1 = 0

 

He did not change it, he just used it. Ooops, they just used it. Er, used them...:lol:

 

golly ea.

 

all depends on who you ask i suppose. it's not like i made up the controversey, let alone the word synesis.

 

usage notes on they @ the free dictionary'

...However, despite the convenience of third-person plural forms as substitutes for generic he and for structurally awkward coordinate forms like his/her, many people avoid using they to refer to a singular antecedent out of respect for the traditional grammatical rule concerning pronoun agreement. Most of the Usage Panelists reject the use of they with singular antecedents. ...

 

so thens...the rep was negative, then it was not. eclogite changed it. as i said above, i find the action unfitting. while i have you on the horn, please admonish belovelife. grazie.

[Qfwfq]

Looking back, I see that the plural pronoun was more out of place than I thought, cuz it reffered to the name and not to the some(one). :doh: Apart from this, "the traditional grammatical rule concerning pronoun agreement" is hardly a rule, the way the cute editor of MW puts it there's a choice between agreement of number and agreement of gender.

 

while i have you on the horn, please admonish belovelife. grazie.

Maybe we should alluvus gets back ontada topic now...:steering:

[Turtle]

Looking back, I see that the plural pronoun was more out of place than I thought, cuz it reffered to the name and not to the some(one). :doh: Apart from this, "the traditional grammatical rule concerning pronoun agreement" is hardly a rule, the way the cute editor of MW puts it there's a choice between agreement of number and agreement of gender.

 

Maybe we should alluvus gets back ontada topic now...:steering:

 

mmmm...as i say, it depends on who you ask as to whether it's a "rule" or not. this goes to the point of the rather messy business of playing grammar cop. then there is the matter of grammar court i suppose, but i'll leave that to the legislators.

 

as to on topic, i didn't bring up the rep business in the first place. moreover, in my last post i employed a phrasal verb form per the op when i wrote "made up" rather than some single verb such as "concocted".

 

ps cute misspelling of referred. ;)

[Turtle]

returning to the original post, i have some more bones to pick.

 

...For example, what does "Go off" mean?

 

It can have at least four meanings:

...

4. "Dislike"" - "If you keep doing that, I'll go off you"

 

...So "Go off" seems able, potentially, to replace four verbs: Leave, Explode, Putrefy, Dislike.

 

 

given the context of the sample sentence of #4, "go off" does not imply dislike and it should actually read "go off on you", not "go off you". the meaning here is to have a [sudden] fit of anger -my conniption- directed at the subject you which is more in line with macphee's #2 "explode" as in an explosion of anger.

 

this ought to clarify my later uses of "go off" that i applied to my actions because as i do dislike bluv, i do not dislike eclogite, notwithstanding that they both provoked me to express my anger.

 

finally, ifn y'all don't want me roused to anger again, don't provoke me again because -to render my gaelic into paraphrased english- no one provokes me with impunity. all-in-all, lack of clarity in thought & communication is hardly restricted to, nor necessary of, special cases of english phrasal verbs.

 

now i'll just go off and lie back down on my rug for a snooze.

[Eclogite]

We say "less" butter, and (maintaining a dying distinction) "fewer" eggs.

Only if we are on a healthy diet.

[Qfwfq]

given the context of the sample sentence of #4, "go off" does not imply dislike and it should actually read "go off on you", not "go off you"

Actually I'm familiar with usage of "going off" and "being off" in the sense of no longer wanting.

 

In any case the trouble is that the meaning of these things are according to usage and are often affected by arbitrarity, so hopes of sorting out rules are slim.

 

ps cute misspelling of referred.;)

Noooo! I meant buffered! Wow that was an awful typo! :hihi:

 

When the time comes that I'm ggoing of god ssppeling, tthe world wil be an even more confusing place...

[Qfwfq]

given the context of the sample sentence of #4, "go off" does not imply dislike and it should actually read "go off on you", not "go off you"

Actually I'm familiar with usage of "going off" and "being off" in the sense of no longer wanting.

 

In any case the trouble is that the meaning of these things are according to usage and are often affected by arbitrarity, so hopes of sorting out rules are slim.

 

ps cute misspelling of referred.;)

Noooo! I meant buffered! Wow that was an awful typo! :hihi:

 

When the time comes that I'm ggoing of god ssppeling, tthe world wil be an even more confusing place...