Saturday 5 June 2010

ENGLISH LANGUAGE: WORDS WE HATE

 A brief guest contribution to the topic by Barry Spence. Take it away, Bazza!

If ye are still intending to keep this thread going, try writing your views on this:

In the tradition of your “Quadrilogy” rant, I’ve come across a DVD box in Morrisons of five OMEN films entitled “THE OMEN Pentology”. Note that it’s not Pentilogy nor even Pentalogy - this latter prefix with ‘---a’ is common enough in correct words related to the number 5, such as pentathlon, pentagon, pentacle/pentagram (these latter two could be useful in the OMEN films), etc.. Pentology using ‘---o’ makes me think of studies of subjects such as geology, horology, sociology, etc.

Using your logic, your imbecile DVD marketing heroes presume customers don’t know the word “quintet”….

Yes, B, indeed it does make me despair for my beloved English language. It's not as if quintet is an obscure word. I'm now waiting for twoology, duology probably being too esoteric, duet is another horrifying possibilty, and as for the lovely word dyptych...

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