In Future, Exponential

 In Future, and Exponential

I've long thought that speaking of 'in future', rather than 'in the future', was a mark -- in Britain -- of not quite having had the best education (or not benefiting from it).  I mean goodness, no one speaks of 'in past', rather than 'in the past' (do they?).  But lo and behold, Robin Collingwood, in his Intellectual Autobiography, speaks in that way--'in future'.  Collingwood was no slouch. 

In another case of fine distinctions being lost -- this can be laid at the door of the Coronavirus pandemic, I mean if correlation is causation (:  -- 'exponential', which has traditionally had its precise mathematical meaning, is, if recent speech is a sign, in danger of meaning 'rapid and scary!'.  

The Ethics of Use and Mention

Most everyone recognises the difference between using words--as when I began this sentence by using 'Everyone'--and mentioning words, as when that word appears the second time in this sentence, enclosed by quotation marks.  I use the word 'fat' when I say 'Boris is fat'; I mention the word 'fat' when I say "Keir said 'Boris is fat'". 

It might seem persnickety to bring the point up, but this distinction is sometimes important--Frege, Godel and Quine took Russell to task on the distinction--and sometimes it is ethically important.  Vitally so. It takes front and centre when the words are slur-words, especially racial ones. To wit: 

A BBC journalist used the N-word in a TV news report

By Amy Woodyatt, CNN Business

(Updated 1558 GMT (2358 HKT) July 29, 2020)

As Lamdin described how a healthcare worker was hit by a car, she warned viewers that they were about to hear "highly offensive language." She then said assailants had called the healthcare worker "a n***er."

 Bristol-based Social Affairs Correspondent Fiona Lamdin did not use the N-word, as in the headline.  She mentioned it.  It does not completely erase the slurriness of the word--this is evinced by the practice of writing 'n***er'--but Lamdin should not be charged with using the word, and indeed there is nothing newsworthy in Woodyatt's story, as far as I can see.  Especially not when Lamdin issued a warning of the coming mention of the word. 

Based off

We say for example that a tune is based on the twelve-bar blues; that a recipe is based on Grandmother's recipe for green enchiladas.  No doubt this expression is figurative: The picture is that you start a product or activity in a certain way, and introduce departures from that base. The base is a foundation, a rock-solid starting-point.  But lately I've seen or heard the following variation:

So I began testing based off of Smith's suggestions in the other thread. 

It does make sense: Starting with Smith's suggestions as a base, the writer speaks of going off in another direction, going 'off-piste'.  I'm sure that this was again borne of confusion or ignorance of the relevant expression, but in this case there is no loss of meaning, as there was in the case of 'egregious' or 'beg the question'.  

Flouted and Flaunted

From The Hill, which I thought observed minimum standards of literacy:

Sean Hannity ripped partygoers who flaunted social distancing guidelines at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks over Memorial Day weekend, The Hill reports.

Of course the writer meant the partygoers flouted the guidelines.  Many lexical confusions start this way: One somewhat unusual word sounds like another unusual word that is not too far away in meaning, so it's an easy mistake to make.  We'll see if the bug takes hold.