A Quibble About Your Use of "Minor Quibble"

Comments

My quibble is with your use of "minor". Minor means lesser, not a minimum. If the scale of criticism can be broken into, say, quarters (major criticism being the top quarter and minor being the bottom quarter), then a minor quibble might be the criticisms that would fall between zero an 1/16 on the scale of importance. Which I think is how people use the term: it's such a small complaint it's not even a regular quibble, but a minor quibble. A large or major quibble, using this schema, would therefore be complaints from 3/16 to 1/4 on the critical importance scale.

Matt the Engineer on July 25, 2019 at 1:20 PM

Could we say George's killing of Lennie in Of Mice and Men is a tender murder?

seatackled on July 25, 2019 at 2:02 PM

3 Thanks for ruining the ending, jerk!

Zapotec on July 25, 2019 at 2:15 PM

A) We don't have diminutives in this language (or not many), so we do what we can.

B) I would argue that shooting someone is less brutal than tearing them apart with your teeth.

spunkbutter on July 25, 2019 at 2:53 PM

Minor quibble = objection upheld.
Brutally murdered == objection overruled. Some murders are certainly brutal, others perhaps not so much. The state murders people through the death penalty, and they take pains to tell people it's not brutal. On that, I disagree -- but the Of Mice and Men example? That might hold up.

Or the song "Killing me Softly," more of a form of torture, really, but about gentle murder.

The Chicken on July 25, 2019 at 3:16 PM