NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/usage/english/10088

Text File | 1992-12-29 | 1.4 KB | 29 lines

Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Path: sparky!uunet!psgrain!hippo!ford.ee.up.ac.za!pchayest.unisa.ac.za!hayesstw
From: [e-mail] (Steve Hayes)
Subject: Unnecessary adjectives
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Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 07:18:10 GMT
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Organization: University of South Africa

A few years ago there was a tendency to describe all records as "track".

You didn't have a sales record or an academic record, but a "track record".
For all I know, field records might also have become track records.

Over the last year or so I've noticed a similar tendency for all bocks to
become "road". This one is much more misleading, because it's newer, and the
picture that comes to mind is barrels in the road, blue lights flashing, a
couple of armoured cars or personnel carriers, and police and soldiers armed
with automatic rifles. The next sentence then mentions a difficult research
problem or something of the like. So what are we supposed to do when we want
to talk about a real roadblock? Or even a real track record? Do we say a
"road roadblock" and a "track track record"?

Steve Hayes, Department of Missiology & Editorial Department
Univ. of South Africa, P.O. Box 392, Pretoria, 0001 South Africa
Internet: [e-mail]
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