And how often does one read "uniquer", "uniquest", or the misuse of "literally", or "decimate"!? Along with endless other examples. English is likely the world's most dynamic language which holds no allegiance to the past, (which these days amount to last tuesday). Within a jungle of countless verbal atrocities the typical misuse of "anniversary" is really not that far from the original Latin intent:
anniversary (n.) c. 1200, "year-day, annual return of a certain date in the year," originally especially of the day of a person's death or a saint's martyrdom, from Medieval Latin anniversarium, noun from Latin anniversarius (adj.) "returning annually,"
Anyone up for a game that awards points for finding errors in these sternly worded talking-tos? For the record I applaud the effort, but DS makes his own errors (including in this post), and the other Stranger writers make a lot of errors too.
Although I'm not sure that it isn't trolling, at this point. Blissful unawareness must have its limits.
Even back when I was one of those annoying prescriptivist pedants, I always thought the prohibitions against using "hopefully" as a phrasal modifier were pretty weak sauce, akin to the argument that you shouldn't split infinitives in English (because Latin? who knows, I could never get a straight answer). Or people who refuse to use "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun because "it just isn't grammatically correct" despite the fact that "they" has been used this way for hundreds of years.
"Ten-year anniversary" isn't particularly bothersome imho. It may be more concise to say "tenth anniversary", but it's not misleading or confusing to say "10-year anniversary." It works just fine. Expecting people to know the etymology of "anniversary" and thereby be aware that "the word 'year' is baked right into it" is kinda pretentious too. I mean, just because someone doesn't read the dictionary for fun doesn't mean they're stupid.
It's more fun to make up your own language-peever rules! They can be more interesting than this bland example, and you can run a quiz about which in a set of three is collected live, and which were made up.
I bet Charles Mudede could invent a good peever rule.
I knew it many years ago...And I think a lot of professional writers know about it too...You can check the works of writers from https://ca.edubirdie.com/essay-writing-h…, they always use this method of writing about anniversaries so it`s not a sensation)
The same example I can say about the word "autobiography". You can`t say "my autobiography" because the word "my" is already baked into "autobiography"...
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Although I'm not sure that it isn't trolling, at this point. Blissful unawareness must have its limits.
Also, is "ATM" regional, or dated? I've been using the "cash machine" for the last decade-and-a-half, but I left Seattle around the same time.
"Ten-year anniversary" isn't particularly bothersome imho. It may be more concise to say "tenth anniversary", but it's not misleading or confusing to say "10-year anniversary." It works just fine. Expecting people to know the etymology of "anniversary" and thereby be aware that "the word 'year' is baked right into it" is kinda pretentious too. I mean, just because someone doesn't read the dictionary for fun doesn't mean they're stupid.
I bet Charles Mudede could invent a good peever rule.
It could involve the meaning of the word "seat" and why that means it's improper for a light rail passenger to place luggage or feet upon one.
The same example I can say about the word "autobiography". You can`t say "my autobiography" because the word "my" is already baked into "autobiography"...